XXXVII -REPORT ON THE COLLECTION AND DISTRIBUTION 

 SCHOODIC SALMON EGGS IN 1878-79. 



By Charles G. Atkins. 



1. — Preparations. 



The preparations for the capture of the breeding fish this year were 

 almost identical with those of the year before, and the work proceeded 

 on the old basis until late in the season, when we were comi)elled to 

 resort to new expedients, which will be detailed below. 



For the incubation of the eggs more extensive preparations were 

 made. The ill-success of many of the lots of eggs sent out the previous 

 season warned me not to depend on the old hatching-house, which evi- 

 dently did not command water enough in a dry winter to forward two 

 millions of eggs and nourish them i)roperly. It was not easy to find 

 a satisftictory remedy. The water of the old hatching-house was spring 

 water. There were numerous other small springs in the neighborhood, 

 but none of those yet discovered could be led into the old hatching- 

 house, and no one of them afibrded alone water enough to supply a half 

 million of eggs. Grand Lake Stream affords water of the very best 

 quality, but unfortunately the facilities for using it are very poor. At 

 the dam which commands the outlet of Grand Lake there is, in the 

 spring of the year, a head of perhaps 6 feet, but in the fall, sometimes 

 less than 2 feet, and any hatching-house located low enough to take 

 this water in without artificial raising, at a low stage of the stream, 

 would infallibly be flooded at time of freshet. Nearly equal and gen- 

 erally similar disadvantages attached to every site along the stream. 

 It was, however, finally decided to put in a temj)orary hatching-house 

 on the west bank of the stream at the first fall below the dam. Even 

 here we had a fall of but little more than 10 feet, and liability to flooding 

 by spring freshets, but the facilities for taking our supply of water from 

 the stream were better than at the dam ; and it was hoped that every 

 year we should have the distribution of the eggs completed and the old 

 hatching-house free for the reception of the 25 per cent., reserved for the 

 stream, before the spring freshets should come. 



The new hatching-house was a very humble structure, only 20 feet by 

 10; but there were placed in it three troughs, each 17 inches deep, 

 which had an aggregate capacity of nearly a million of eggs. Wire 



789 



