174 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



charring. The.^^e trong'lis furnished almost 400 square feet of hatching- 

 space. There were three sets or tiers of troughs, one set beh)\v the 

 other, with eiglit troughs arranged parallel to each other in each tier. 

 There was a fall of three inches from one tier to another. The troughs 

 were covered. 



The filtering arrangement was quite perfect. It consisted of what the 

 miners call a sand-box, which is merely an empty box to catch the heav- 

 iest of the sediment, and of two filtering-tanks proper. The water, after 

 leaving the sand-box, passed through ten filters of sand and gravel and 

 eight common filters of flannel. 



All this provision for cleansing the water did not, however, prevent a 

 fine fungoid growth from coming down with the water on to the eggs, 

 which, when it was first discovered, had got such a, start that its results 

 mnst have been very disastrous had it not been for the ingenuity of my 

 first assistant, Mr. John G. Woodbury, of t>an Francisco. Mr. Woodbury, 

 on having his attention called to the condition of the eggs, suggested the 

 very bold course of washing off tlie fungus with sand and water. The 

 plan adopted was to i)ut a few hundred eggs in a pail partly full of water, 

 and having a handful of fine river-sand at the bottom. Upon holding 

 this pail of eggs and sand under a stream of water, the whirling sand 

 was brought into contact with the whirling eggs so constantly and rap- 

 idly, and yet so gently, that in a few minutes the fungus was entirely 

 cleansed from the eggs, while the eggs were not injured in the least. 



It would be a long and tedious jol) to go through this operation with 

 many hundred thousand eggs, but with the few thousands which we had 

 then laid down this ingeniouscontrivance answered its purpose admirably. 

 It is proper to say that this plan was not tried till the spinal column of 

 the fish had appeared; otherwise, even the gentle contact of the sand 

 and water would probably have injured the less-matured embryo. 



10. — PACKING AND SHIPPING THE EGGS. 



The only moss that I could find or hear of was nearly seventy miles 

 to the north, at the sonrces of the Sacramento, and the best of this moss 

 grew just where one of the tributaries of the Sacramento bnrsts from 

 the eaith, at the base of Shasta Butte. This was the moss which I 

 used for ]>acking, and it was admirable. I packed the eggs in two com- 

 mon wooden boxes, holding about a cubic foot each. A soft but dense 

 layer of moss, just as it grows, was first placed at the bottom of the box. 

 A layer of eggs was then spread over the moss carpet, then a thin layer 

 of moss, and so on, alternating to the top, as is the usual manner of 

 packing ova, except that half way up the box a thin wooden rack or 

 partition was put in to break the pressure of the upper layers. These 

 two boxes being filled, and the covers being fastened on with screws, to 

 avoid the concussion of driving nails, a dozen or twenty holes were 

 bored in them to admit the air, and they were packed in an open wooden 

 crate large enough to admit a layer of hay and straw four inches through 



