24 



ARTIFICIAL, PROPAGATION OF PACIFIC SALMONS. 



tion is fastened on. The packing is then resumed as before until the 

 case is filled, when the cover is screwed on, and the eggs are ready to 

 be transported. 



For shipping eyed salmon eggs to various points in the United 

 States what is known as the Atkins-Dinsmore case has been quite 

 generally substituted for the old tray-shipment method described on 

 page 84 of the Appendix to the Annual Report of the U. S. Com- 

 missioner of Fisheries for 1897. Eggs can be transported in the 

 Atkins-Dinsmore case as soon as the eye spot is plainly visible and up 

 to within a few weeks of hatching. When shipped at too late a period 

 of development, however, the eggs will hatch en route and the em- 

 bryos perish. 



This method of packing eggs * * * has the special advantage of nialiiug 

 a comparatively light package — a factor of great economic importance in triins- 

 portation. The outside case may be an ordinary box of suitable dimensions. 



-^% 







iV 



-fi- 



X 



A 









^ 



iX* 



V 



R 



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 V 



Fig. 7. — Atkins-Dinsmore shipping case. Plan. 



In it are packed, surrounded by moss, several boxes made of three-eighths-inch 

 boards, and usually 12 inches wide by 15 inches long by 31 inches deep, each 

 box containing a mass of 10,000 to 20,000 eggs in mosquito netting, with moss 

 around all sides. No ice is used, care being taken that the packing be done 

 in a temperature below 50°, that all packing material be kept in a place 

 slightly below freezing point, and that the moss in which the eggs are packed 

 be sprinkled with snow. This method of packing is an economical one for 

 shipments of eggs of Salmonidre during cold weather, but can not advanta- 

 geously be used for eggs of spring-spawning fishes unless there is available a 

 cold-storage room in which to do the packing. Recently the superintendent of 

 the Baker Lake (Wash.) station, who has had occasion to ship eggs of steel- 

 head trout and Pacific salmon in warm weather, has packed them in light 

 cases with alternate layers of moss, and then placed two tiers of these thin 

 cases side by side in an outer case with a large hopper of ice over the whole, 

 the drip passing down between the two tiers of inner cases. The chief ad- 

 vantage of this case for long-distance shipments is in the fact that less ice 

 is required than in other forms of cases using ice, with a consequent saving 

 in transportation charges. It can also be used in warm as well as cold weather. <» 



« Titcomb, John W. Loc. cit., pp. 743. 



