10 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 



The former steam plant at the Baird (Cal.) salmon station having 

 become obsolete and worn out, electricity has been installed and all 

 buildings have been equipped with electric lights. Arc lights at the 

 seining grounds permit advantageous night work and with electrical 

 power the pumps can be operated Avith considerable saving of labor 

 and money. 



At Manchester, loAva, the capacity of the station has been increased 

 and improved by the construction of a large breeding pond, 200 feet 

 by 180 feet, and by relining the nursery-stock ponds with cement. 



A nine-room frame house has been built for the superintendent at 

 Put in Bay, Ohio. 



At Tupelo, Miss., a steam pumping plant has been installed, and 

 the wells which furnish the water supply have been deepened and 

 enlarged. 



A steamboat 61 feet long, especially equipped for the purpose, 

 has been purchased for use in connection with lobster propagation on 

 the Maine coast. 



Personnel. — The successful results and large output of the stations 

 in recent j^ears bring added credit to the superintendents and em- 

 ployees responsible for the collection of eggs upon consideration of 

 the difficulty of keeping skilled men in the service. The same class 

 of employment in commercial life brings a remuneration one and a 

 half to five times as great. With such competition the Bureau is 

 handicapped by the inability to secure competent men or, securing 

 them, to retain them. 



BIOLOGICAL INQUIRIES. 



The study of the habits, migrations, spawning, diseases, etc., of 

 the aquatic animals sought by man, and the almost equally impor- 

 tant study of the creatures that serve as food or act as enemies to 

 those of economic value, is conducted from year to year as a fun- 

 damental branch of the work in behalf of the fisheries. It was 

 continued in 1907 upon the usual lines, in several cases being sup- 

 plemented by direct experiment with immediate commercial appli- 

 cation. 



OYSTER EXPERIMENTS. 



Lynnhaven Bay., Virginia. — In the Bureau's experiments at Lynn- 

 haven for the development of a commercial process for fattening 

 oysters artificially, the only important problem yet awaiting solution 

 is that of materially increasing the output of the plant. Consider- 

 able progress toward this end has been made during the past year, 

 the yield of the claire in 1907 being 176 barrels, against 125 barrels 

 in the preceding year; and, as with a given equipment the expenses 

 of operation are not materially increased whatever the product, this 



