MANUAL OF FISH-CULTURE. 157 



usually spread two layers deep, but can be put on more thickly. When 

 eighteen trays are filled they are wrapped in the outer cloth, previously 

 soaked in water, and tightly buckled together. The crate covers and 

 tray cloths are boiled in water each time after use. 



Each tray — 14 by 19 inches area, with two layers of eggs — holds 

 about 20,000 eggs, the contents of a full crate representing from 300,000 

 to 400,000 eggs. While in transit the crates are sprinkled with river 

 water on the sides at least once an hour, and kept in the shade, away 

 from the cooling influence of the wind, to preserve even temperature. 



TRANSPLANTING. 



The propagation of shad is mainly carried on to maintain or increase 

 the supply in rivers where the species is native, and the fry are liber- 

 ated with that end in view; but the shad has also been planted, in 

 some cases with great success, in waters in which it was either unknown 

 or found in small quantities. Large numbers of fry have been liberated 

 in tributaries of the Gulf of Mexico, but without marked results. 

 Between 1873 and 1892 several million fry were experimentally placed 

 in the waters of Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, and Bear Lake, Utah. 



From 1884 to 1880, 3,000,000 fry were liberated in the Colorado Eiver 

 at the Needles, in Arizona. It was believed that the shad would be per- 

 manently confined to the Gulf of California by the warm water of the 

 lower part, and would then return to the Colorado and Gila rivers to 

 spawn. The time having gone by when the adults should return, the 

 experiment is regarded as without result. It has been found that the 

 shallow waters at the mouth of the Colorado Eiver are barren of life 

 and the conditions are unfavorable to stocking that river with shad. 



Remarkable success attended the stocking of waters of the Pacific 

 Coast northward from Monterey. In 1871, 12,000 shad fry from the 

 Hudson Eiver were liberated in the Sacramento Eiver by the California 

 Fish Commission, and in 1873 the United States Fish Commission made 

 a second deposit of 35,000. Subsequent plants in the Sacramento, 

 aggregating 009,000, were made by the United States Commission from 

 1876 to 1880. From these small colonies, amounting to less than 1 per 

 cent of the number now annually planted in the Atlantic Slope rivers, 

 the shad have multiplied and distributed themselves along nearly 3,000 

 miles of coast from southern California to southeastern Alaska. 



The shad rapidly made their way up the coast from San Francisco 

 Bay. They reached Eogue Eiver, Oregon, in 1882. In the Columbia 

 a few were taken as early as 187G or 1877. About 1881 or 1882 they 

 were on the coast of Washington, reaching Puget Sound in 1882. They 

 appeared in the Fraser Eiver, British Columbia, in 1891 ; and in the 

 Stikine Eiver, near Wrangell Island, Alaska — latitude 56"^ 30' — the 

 same year. The species now is found along the entire coast from Los 

 Angeles County, California, to Chilkat, Alaska, covering 22 degrees of 

 latitude. Its distribution, considered from the standpoint of commer- 

 cial importance, is from Monterey Bay to Puget Sound. 



