1 6 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 



a great knife dexterously cuts ofif the head, the tail, 

 and the fins ; then with a sudden thrust he removes 

 the intestines and the eggs. The body goes into a 

 tank of water ; and the head is dropped into a box 

 on a flat-boat, and goes down the river to be 

 made into salmon oil. Next, the body is brought 

 to another table ; and Quong Sang, with a machine 

 like a feed-cutter, cuts it into pieces each just as 

 long as a one-pound can. Then Ah Sam, with a 

 butcher-knife, cuts these pieces into strips just as 

 wide as the can. Next Wan Lee, the ''China boy," 

 brings down a hundred cans from the loft where the 

 tinners are making them, and into each can puts a 

 spoonful of salt. It takes just six salmon to fill a 

 hundred cans. Then twenty Chinamen put the 

 pieces of meat into the cans, fitting in little strips 

 to make them exactly full. Ten more solder up 

 the cans, and ten more put the cans into boiling 

 water till the meat is thoroughly cooked, and five 

 more punch a little hole in the head of each can to 

 let out the air. Then they solder them up again, 

 and little girls paste on them bright-colored labels 

 showing merry little cupids riding the happy salmon 

 up to the cannery door, with Mount Tacoma and 

 Cape Disappointment in the background ; and a 

 legend underneath says that this is "■ Booth's," or 

 " Badollet's Best," or *' Hume's," or " Clark's," or 

 *' Kinney's Superfine Salt Water Salmon." Then 

 the cans are placed in cases, forty-eight in a case, 

 and five hundred thousand cases are put up every 

 year. Great ships come to Astoria, and are loaded 

 with them ; and they carry them away to London 

 and San Francisco and Liverpool and New York 



