STONE SALMON-BREEDING STATION, M'CLOUD RIVER, 1870. 697 



but small grilse in the river. We caught them by thousands — young 

 male salmon weighing from two to six pounds — while the female salmon 

 were so scarce that they did not average more than one to every fifty 

 fish caught. We tried to get rid of the grilse. We gave hundreds to 

 the Indians. We let thousands go up the river through the bridge, but 

 still they did not materially diminish, nor did the number of females in- 

 crease. The river seemed to be full of grilse and nothing else. I think 

 the most plausible explanation of this excessive disproportion of the 

 two sexes in the river is as follows : The canneries on the main Sacra- 

 mento were running at their fullest capacity all summer, having a vast 

 number of drift-nets in the river nearly all the time. It is quite possible 

 that some of them fished with small-meshed nets. This would account 

 for the fact that no large fish reached the McCloud. The great increase 

 of salmon in the Sacramento, occasioned by artificial hatching, accounts 

 for the other part of the mystery, viz, the immense number of grilse. 



The law prohibiting the capture of salmon in nets comes into force on 

 the 1st day of August. Consequently, the course of the salmon up the 

 Sacramento was unobstructed by nets after that day, and about two 

 weeks later large salmon began to appear in the McCloud, and from that 

 time they continued to increase, so that by the 1st of September we 

 occasionally caught as many large salmon as small ones, and of the 

 large ones one-half or more were frequently females. 



As the season progressed another peculiarity developed itself. After 

 a few days of taking eggs, the spawning season, contrary to all our pre- 

 vious experience, seemed to remain at a standstill ; in other words, the 

 number and proportion of ripe spawners did not increase with the prog- 

 ress of the season as usual. For instance, on the 6th of September, 

 when the McCloud salmon had nearly finished spawning in 1876, the 

 ratio of unripe females to the ripe ones was greater than it was a week 

 before, and, judging from the unadvanced condition of the females on 

 that day, one would have said that the spawning season had just com- 

 menced, instead of having been in progress nearly a fortnight. No ex- 

 planation of this peculiarity has yet presented itself. 



By the 20th of August the corrals for holding the spawning salmon 

 were put in the river, the spawning-house was built, all the trays and 

 covers and troughs of both hatching-houses were put in order, and every- 

 thing placed in readiness for taking eggs. 



It had been my expectation to take a very large number of salmon 

 eggs this year. Indeed, 1 hoped to eclipse all previous years, and was 

 going on with that expectation till I received your telegram stating that 

 not over six million eggs would be required. On receiving this dispatch 

 I reduced my force to the lowest number possible to carry on operations, 

 and with this number I continued work until the eggs were all taken and 

 shipped. 



We took the first salmon eggs on the 25th of August, and on the 8th 



