64 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER. OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



several months old are sometimes afflicted with a similar growth, which 

 may possibly be not the original cause of the disease, but only an 

 attendant symptom. Such an attack was experienced at Craig Brook 

 in July, 1888. The fry of Atlantic salmon were the sufferers and the 

 mortality was considerable, but it yielded promptly to a salt bath. 



The occurrence of fungus on wounds, even on such as result from 

 the abrasion of the skin or the loss of a scale, is very common, but such 

 cases are rarely fatal, though no remedy be applied. The only serious 

 attack of fungus on adult salmon occurred during the experimental 

 work at Craig Brook in 1871. The first inclosure made to receive the 

 breeding fish was a small and shallow one, made by damming the brook 

 itself at a point where its volume consisted of about 30 per cent of 

 spring water. The fish had suffered considerably from the handling 

 necessary in bringing them so far and from the rough character of the 

 experimental cars in which they were transported. The first of them 

 were placed in the inclosure June 8. On the 12th 2 of them died, on 

 the 13th 2 more, and by the 17th 14 were dead out of 41 received; by 

 the 20th the mortality had increased to such a point that it became 

 evident that not a single salmon would survive unless some change was 

 made in the mode of confining them, and they were all removed and 

 placed in other quarters. Kine of them, already so badly diseased as 

 to be considered hopeless cases, were turned loose in Craig Pond, and 

 part of these recovered and spawned in the autumn following on a 

 gravelly shore, where some of them were taken and found to bear the 

 well-healed scars of their ugly sores. 



The symptoms noted were sluggishness and heedlessness; an inclina- 

 tion to swim near the surface of the water; a white, filmy appearance 

 of the eyes, which seemed to be accompanied or followed in many cases 

 by blindness; a white fungoid growth on the abraded tips of the fins 

 and wherever the scales had been rubbed off'; white blotches breaking 

 out on all parts of the body, even where there had been no mark of 

 injury, particularly on the head, proving on examination to be patches 

 of white fungus, which, on the parts of the body covered by scales, 

 grew underneath the latter and pushed them from their places. 



Experiments in confining salmon in other waters the same season 

 turned out successfully, and it seems that the most important condi- 

 tions in the case were these: The area of the fatal inclosure was about 

 a quarter of an acre; the water was partly from springs and was so 

 exceedingly transparent that a pin dropped into it could be readily 

 seen at a depth of 6 feet, so that there was practically no ijrotection 

 from the rays of the June sun; the fish had been transported in a com- 

 mon dory with holes bored in the bottom to admit water, a very inferior 

 sort of car compared with those now in use; they had been transported 

 a long distance and passed three separate locks and had finally been 

 hauled in a tub on a cart over rough ground from Alamoosook Lake to 

 the iuclosure. 



