558 EEPORT OF COMMISSIOlSrER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



siicli transportation for twenty-four hours ; but this will not be suffi- 

 cient. If one, on the contrary, employs a plan recently introduced into 

 Canada, and freezes the fish in the proper quantity safe and sound in 

 blocks of ice, so that the fish and ice form a compact mass with two to 

 three inches of pure ice between the fish and oi^en air, an operation 

 which can easily be performed in tin boxes of suitable form by iiacliing 

 in a mixture of ice and salt, which gives a cold of 31.45° Fahr., then, 

 if placed in an ice-house, or during shipment packed with care in pieces 

 of ice and bad conductors of heat— moss, which is found everywhere, 

 or sawdust, if this can be had — they will probably be preserved for a 

 long time unspoiled, just as safely as the mammoth which for many 

 thousand years has lain buried in Siberia's ice-fields, and which now and 

 then comes to light in a perfectly unspoiled condition. 



There is thus nothing that prevents or discourages fishing — harvest- 

 ing — from occurring chiefly in summer, when this is associated with the 

 least trouble and the least discomfort from cold and bad weather, and 

 nothing in the way of j)reserviug- fish in the most valuable condition — 

 perfectly fresh — as long- as it may be found profitable. One has it then 

 fully in his power to bring them to market at the time and the places 

 when and where it will pay best, even if these are far distant and many 

 days are required to reach them. The preservation of the harvest is also 

 just as simi^le as the preservation of corn and hay. 



I shall next briefly mention the habits of the salmon, which in cer- 

 tain x)articulars difier from those of the lake fishes. 



Ancient, fully trustworthy experience has shown that the salmon, 

 like the birds of passage, seek and, with unerring instinct, return to 

 the place where they were born, and equally well whether their birth- 

 place is a mighty stream or a little brook which the salmon in many 

 places cannot penetrate without lying flat on their sides or employing 

 accidental floods in order to traverse the shallower places between the 

 pools where they can find water deep enough. This last phenomenon 

 one has nowadays rarely an opportunity to observe, since nearly all 

 these brooks have long since been fished out, so that for many years no 

 salmon have been born in them. I have, however, personally had the 

 op]M)rtunity of observing this fact in the little river or, more properly, 

 brook, which forms the boundary between us and Eussia on the south 

 side of Yaranger Fjord. It may be forded dry-shod, when it is lowest, at 

 many places, yet salmon are found in most of the pools quite up to the 

 lake in which it has its origin. Every brook, which at least now and 

 then has a supply of water so far uniform that the salmon can swim 

 over the shallow places, can be made a collecting-place for the salmon 

 in any quantity, because one has it in his power to make each of them 

 the point of departure for young salmon in every case with little trouble. 

 The hatching of eggs may take i)lace wherever a spring, or even a brook, 

 sui)plied with water only in the wiuter half of the year, is found — in the 

 last event, of course, with a little greater cost of construction, which at 



