MILNER ON THE ARTIFICIAL CULTURE OF THE SHAD. 443 



Seth Green's instructions to his men M^ere, to fall within the whole 

 number of fish rather than to exaggerate the quantities. The numbers 

 they were in the habit of estimating in the cans, taken from the boxes, 

 would not account for the number of eggs impregnated and placed in 

 the boxes, and for which much more accurate means of numbering were 

 available than for the young fishes. 



It wasdetermiued, while at the hatching-establishment on the Connec- 

 ticut River, to attempt to obtain a more definite knowledge of the num- 

 bers of fish we were planting in different rivers. 



To do this, dippers full of fish were taken, having the shad about 

 as thick in the water as we had been accustomed to carry them 

 in the cans. These were carefully counted, and, knowing the number of 

 dippers full that were put into a can, we found we had been calculating 

 about 35 per cent, (probably rather more than this) short of the actual 

 number carried. 



As it is scarcely practicable to ladle out the shad-eggs into the hatch- 

 ing-boxes, a very good mode would be to have lines either graved or 

 painted around the insides of the impregnating pans, and their distance 

 from the bottom would show approximately the number of eggs, if this 

 should be determined in the first place by weighing the quantities that 

 would fill the pan to the lines, and counting a definite fraction of the 

 weight. 



An overestimate in any locality, of course, places more accurate esti- 

 mates in other regions in unfair comparison, and, too, the more ex- 

 actly and correctly we understand the extent of the means necessary to 

 produce the results required, the more definite our knowledge and the 

 greater precision in the direction of the efforts to be used. 



Judging from the reports of State commissioners and the general 

 literature of pisciculture, there is a well-understood need for some defl- 

 niteness and uniformity of standard in estimating eggs and young fishes 

 among practical workers; and it would employ the time of some one 

 interested to good advantage if he would devise methods for this pur- 

 pose sufficiently practicable to receive the approval of others of the 

 profession. The occasional discrepancies that are discovered in pub- 

 lished statements, between the sums of the number of eggs received 

 and the number of young fishes produced from them, indicates the 

 great need there is in this direction. 



22. — THE CARE OF YOUNG SHAD DURING TRANSPORTATION. 



(22a.) The apparatus. — The apparatus used in the transfer of the fish we 

 had obtained in Washington, modeled after that seen in Seth Green's 

 establishment near Rochester, N. Y. It consisted of the articles described 

 as follows : 



The cans were large fifty-quart milk-cans, made in the best manner, 

 from the strongest material used by the manufacturers ; the principal 



