49 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 
seatter all the eggs. It must be ascertained whether the fish is ripe 
before it is taken from the water, or the instant it is lifted from the 
water. The vent can then be plugged, the fish put in a strait-jacket, 
and the eggs taken without difficulty. Various methods of plugging 
the parent sturgeon were tried, the most effective of which was to 
stuff a handkerchief instantly into the vent and keep it there, but if 
the fish is given any time to struggle the eggs will be lost. 
Once the eggs of the lake sturgeon are taken it is an easy matter to 
impregnate them. It nearly always happens when a straggling ripe 
female is found, or when the females ripen in confinement, that ripe 
males for fertilizing the eggs can not be obtained, but if ripe females 
are captured during the three or four days they are on the spawning- 
beds, ripe males will be found in abundance. When the ripe females 
in the Lamoille sturgeon hole were caught a quart of milt might have 
been taken from the males had it been necessary. 
The eggs of the lake sturgeon are easily hatched in any jars used in 
hatching pike perch and white-fish if a stream of water is run through 
the jars with sufficient pressure to keep the eggs in constant motion. 
Probably 80 to 90 per cent of lake-sturgeon eggs taken in future will 
be hatched. 
In the latter part of April about 1,400 eggs were secured from the 
steelhead trout hatched at the station in 1897 from eggs sent from 
California and kept in tanks in the hatchery. A large percentage of 
the eggs were impregnated and hatched, producing healthy fry. 
STEAMER FISH HAWK (JAMES A. SMITH IN CHARGE). 
As soon as practicable after the vessel arrived on the Delaware 
River on April 30 the hatching apparatus was erected on the main 
decks and arrangements made for sending spawn-takers to the fishing 
shores at Howells Cove, Bennett’s, and Cramer Hill, and to the 
gill nets off Billingsport, N. J. No ripe fish were found until May 6, 
probably because of the extremely cool weather which prevailed. 
Daily collections of eggs continued from that date to June 13, during 
which period 115,033,000 were secured and 52,813,000 fry hatched 
and distributed; 24,706,000 fertilized eggs were transferred to Havre 
de Grace, Md., 2,051,000 to Central Station, Washington, D. C., 
4,235,000 to the Maryland Fish Commission at Druid Hill Park, Balti- 
more, and 1,419,000 to the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, N. Y. 
Owing to lack of hatching facilities 6,720,000 were deposited on the 
spawning-grounds. The fry were planted in streams along the coast 
from the mouth of the Delaware Bay to Massachusetts. Of the total 
number of eggs taken 76,955,000 were secured from the three seines 
referred to above, 49,000,000 from the Howell Cove seine, and 38,078,000 
from the gill-net fishermen off Billingsport. 
Though not quite as many shad were caught by the fishermen as 
the previous year, the fish-cultural work was the most successful and 
satisfactory ever done by the Fish Hawk, for which credit is due not 
