154 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



to run off or to be sucked up as by a sponge. The mass being porous 

 prevents the fish from becoming musty. But the coming methods of 

 preserving bait are what is called the dry-air process and the hard-freez- 

 ing process. In the dry-air process you have your ice in large solid 

 cakes in the upper part of the refrigerator and your substance to be 

 l)reserved in the bottom. By a particular mode of adjusting the con- 

 nection between the upper chamber and the lower there is a constant 

 circulation of air, by means of which all the moisture of the air is con- 

 tinually being condensed on the ice, leaving that which envelopes the 

 bait or fish perfectly dry. Fish or any other animal substance will keep 

 almost indefinitely in peri'ectly dry air about 40° or 45°, which can be 

 attained very readily by means of this dry-air api^aratus. I had an 

 instance of that in the case of a refrigerator filled with peaches, grapes, 

 salmon, a leg of mutton, and some beefsteaks, with a great variety of 

 other substances. At the end of four months in midsummer, in the 

 Agricultural Building, these were in a perfectly sound and i^repossess- 

 iug condition. IsTo one would have hesitated one moment to eat the 

 beefsteaks, and one might be very glad of the chance at times to have it 

 cooked. This refrigerator has been used between San Francisco and 

 New York, and between Chicago and New York, where the trip has 

 occupied a week or ten days, and they are now used on a very large 

 scale, tons upon tons of grapes and pears being sent from San Francisco 

 by this means. I had a cargo of fish-eggs brought from California to 

 Chicago in a perfect condition. Another method is the hard-frozen 

 l)rocess. You use a freezing mixture of salt and ice powdered fine, this 

 mixture producing a temperature of twenty degrees above zero, which 

 can be kept up just as long as occasion requires by keeping up the sup- 

 ply of ice and salt. 



"Q. How big is the refrigerator ? — A. There is no limit to the size 

 that may be used. They are made of enormous size for the purpose of 

 preserving salmon, and in New York they keep all kinds of fish. I 

 have been in and seen a cord of codfish, a cord of salmon, a cord of 

 Spanish mackerel, and other fish piled up just like cord- wood, dry, hard, 

 and firm, and retaining its qualities for an indefinite time. 



" Q- Well, can fish or animals be kept for an unlimited period if fro- 

 zen in that way ? — A. You may keep fish or animals hard dried frozen 

 for a thousand years or ten thousand years perfectly well, and be as- 

 sured there will be no change. 



" Q. Have geologists or paleontologists satisfied themselves of that by 

 actual cases of the preservation of animal substances for a long period f 

 — A. Yes; we have perfectly satisfactory evidence of that. About fifty 

 years ago the carcass of a mammoth, frozen, was washed out from the 

 gravel of the river Lena, I think, one of the rivers of Siberia, and was 

 in such perfect preservation that the flesh was served as food for the 

 dogs of the natives for over six months. Mr. Adams, a St. Petersburg 

 merchant, came along on a trading expedition, and found it nearly con- 



