EXPERIMENTS IN PROPAGATING MAIFISCHE. 857 



beliincl at Heidelberg. It was a very comforting assurance whicli the 

 fisliermen made to me, that so far they had not cauglit any "maiflsche" 

 that were ready to spawn, all the more so as I had been somewhat 

 frightened by the assertion which Director Haackat-Hiiningen had made 

 on the 1st of May at the piscicultnral congress, that this year the "mai- 

 fiscbe" would already spawn in the Ehine, which assertion has fortu- 

 nately not proved true. 



On the 16th of May Mr. Miiller went down the Neckar in a boat, with 

 seven hatching-boxes and two vessels for transporting fish, and took his 

 station at Feudenheim, where he arranged everything for his experi- 

 ments. Various articles, such as a file, pincers, wire, tin, a thermometer, 

 a microscope, &c., were procured at Heidelberg and taken along by him. 

 I went to Heilbronn, in order to gather further information regarding 

 the ascent of the " maifiscbe" in the Neckar, and visited Mr. Friedrich 

 Drantz, who owns the Neckar fisheries a few miles below, and has 

 rented them out to three fishermen, whom he has given certain regula- 

 tions for protecting the fish. This gentleman informed me that in his 

 fisheries "maifische" were only caught in very exceptional cases; that 

 they scarcely ever go up as far as Heilbronn, where there is a stone 

 weir, and were not found beyond that place. 



On the 17th of May I again went to Seckenheim via Mannheim, gave 

 orders to have the covers of the hatching-boxes arranged in a simpler 

 and more j)ractical manner, and had ten new boxes made, as dissecting 

 a female " maifische " had convinced me that three to four boxes might 

 be required for all these eggs, and we might consequently be short of 

 boxes. The weather was cool all the time, and on the Neckar never 

 higher than 13^-14° U. (Cl°-Glo F.), and the air was raw, which makes 

 the fish disinclined for spawning. If the weather got warmer, the fisher- 

 men told us, spawning fish might be caught next week. 



On the 18th of May I went to Coblentz and Neuendorf, via Mayence, 

 to visit Mr. Joseph Glockuer. He was just engaged in catching " mai- 

 fische," but none of the females which he had caught were ready to 

 spawn. I paid him the money which he had laid out tor sending hatch- 

 ing-boxes to Basle, Hiiningen, and Heidelberg, and asked him to go on 

 with the hatching process as soon as he caught any spawning " mai- 

 fische." He took a deep interest in this matter, and told me that last 

 year he had got artificially impregnated spawn of the perch and had 

 hatched it in the boxes, and that on the 26th of June he bad caught a 

 very fine specimen of a female " maifische" ready for spawning, that he 

 had immediately impregnated the spawn artificially, and bad placed it in 

 the hatching-boxes. This spawn had remained in good condition for 

 some days, but one morning lie found that it was all white and dead. 

 I told him that this was caused by the fine mud contained in the Ehine 

 water, which stuck to the lower part of the sieve and finally covered 

 the eggs entirely ; in future he should twice a day take off this mud 

 with a brush from the outside of the box, for thus a new current was 



