17 



The commercial value of the white-fish very early attracted 

 attention to its artificial culture, after it began to be in- 

 quired about and discussed whether any fishes could be 

 advantageously cultivated by artificial methods. Even in 

 the early sixties attempts were made at it — of course, crude 

 and, in the main, unsuccessful — but still they were steps 

 ahead and in the right direction. 



It was not, however, until a Fishery Commission had 

 been reluctantly granted by the Legislature in 1873 that 

 efforts were made in the systematic way necessary to 

 insure success. After two years of hatching by contract 

 with a private individual, Orren M. Chase came from Cale- 

 donia, N. Y. , and erected a humble building near the river 

 front, in Detroit, on a rented lot. The house v»^as about 

 20x50 feet, one story, and battoned. It was equipped with 

 Holton boxes, which, in their day, were the best known 

 apparatus for that work. A few years of observation on 

 the working of the Holton box showed to the clear mind of 

 Orren Chase a better way, one which has held its place for 

 twelve years, and has not been improved upon yet — that is, 

 the glass jar. There is not space here to go into the history 

 of the evolution of Mr. Chase's idea ; it was, like most inven- 

 tions, a series of exjDeriments which, step by step, led the 

 seeker after truth, who steadfastly follows true principles, 

 to a correct conclusion. 



The glass jar furnished the eggs a regulated flow of 

 water upward, which gives constant motion, keeping the 

 eggs clean and preventing the dead or imperfectly fecun- 

 dated ones from injuring the sound ones. Besides enabling 

 the handling of a very much greater number of eggs with a 

 given water suj)ply and a given room space, l)y using the 

 same water over and over ; it allows two j)ersons to take 

 better care of 40,000,000 eggs than eight or ten persons could 

 of 10,000,000. This house contained 212 jars, with a capacity 

 each of about 140,000, making the aggregate of the house, if 

 all were filled, of nearly 30,000,000. In 1883 the Legislature 



