oO 
REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 
serves as a most valuable adjunct to the main laboratory. The 
house upon it has been extended, and furnishes room for sleeping- 
quarters, and for storing apparatus, etc. 
A new structure was built and launched in 1900. This house- 
boat laboratory has met all expectations, and is satisfactory in 
every respect. 
The new house-boat laboratory was built by the Providence Dry 
Dock Company, in April, 1900, and is a thoroughly staunch craft. 
A brief description of it is as follows: There are two pontoons, 
52 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 4 feet deep, of three-inch hard pine, 
completely decked with two-inch hard pine; each pontoon has 
three bulk-heads and four water-tight compartments accessible by 
hatches. The pontoons are placed 8 feet apart and securely fast- 
ened together by cross-beams and knees at each end, and are 
painted all over, having copper paint below. A house 10x10 
feet is located at each end of the boat, with floors of two-inch 
hard pine, and with roof, sides, doors, shelves, and closets of 
North Carolina pine. They are painted white outside, and fin- 
ished in natural wood inside. The roof, 7 feet from the floor, is 
covered with canvas and painted. The well between the pontoons 
is open from one house to the other for a distance of 20 feet, and 
under the houses is accessible through hatches in the floors. The 
more exact measurements and proportions are given in the accom- 
panying drawing smade to scale. In drawing number 4 the struc- 
ures under the house are shown at one end, while in the other we 
_ have a ground plan of the floor. The craft is secured at one end 
by two mushroom anchors, placed about thirty feet apart, from 
which cables are brought together into a swivel, then through the 
ring of the swivel is passed a galvanized-iron chain which is made 
fast to bits on either side of the house. By this arrangement the 
strain upon each anchor is mainly in one direction, and the boat 
is always headed into the wind without swinging as if would if the 
chains were attached to one bit. At the side of the house-boat 
booms are rigged, to which the small boats may be tied. One or 
more floats are also usually attached to the house-boat, in order 
