OPERATIONS ON THE m'cLOUD RIVER IN 1876. 939 



facilitate the work of this year. It helped us also by the use of various 

 expedients to make the dam more salmon-proof than ever before, so 

 that I think it is quite safe to say that, after it was wholly completed, not 

 a single salmon of any considerable size got by it till we allowed them 

 to. The credit of making the dam so secure this year is mainly due to 

 the efforts of Mr. Myron Green, who has been with me in California 

 several years. I ought to add here, perhaps, that the spring rains 

 make such a resistless torrent of this mountain stream, that it carries 

 everything before it, and renders it necessary to build a new bridge and 

 dam every season. The same cause makes it necessary to put up a 

 new current-wheel every year for pumping up the water. In putting up 

 this wheel this season I made some considerable changes. Hitherto 

 the wheel was required merely to lift the water high enough to till the 

 hatching-troughs on the bar below high-water mark, where the hatch- 

 ing-tents formerly stood. This year, however, as I contemplated i)lacing 

 a new and permanent hatching building above high-water mark, it be- 

 came necessary, under the proposed arrangement, to lift the water 

 nearly ten feet higher than before. To accomplish this, I erected a 17- 

 foot wheel 40 rods or so farther up the river, where a favorable place was 

 found with a powerful current. The main difficulty here was to place 

 in position the piers for the standards to rest upon, but this being 

 accomplished, the rest of the work of building the wheel and conveying 

 the flume to the site of the hatching house was easily managed. 



The location which I selected for the hatching-house was a flat,just 

 behind our larger main dwelling house, and about a dozen rods from 

 the wheel. It was so covered with brush and rocks that it appeared at 

 first to be rather an unpromising place for a building, but after being 

 cleared and graded, it proved to be the best spot we could have found 

 for it. The house was built 100 "eet long and 24 feet wide. The frame 

 was made of heavy 8-inch timbers, resting on solid posts of oak, and is 

 a very substantial structure. The wheel sends the water through a 

 flume to the filtering-tanks at the upper end of the building, whence it 

 is conveyed in the usual manner to the hatching-troughs. The hatch- 

 ing apparatus is the same used last year, namely, the Williamson 

 troughs, with the deep wir^ baskets' described in last year's report. I 

 ought to add here that the wire basket gave the same perfect satisfac- 

 tion that they did the year before. They are unquestionably the best 

 thing known for maturing salmon-eggs on a large scale. Of the utmost 

 simplicity in construction, they are more easily handled and will hatch 

 more eggs with less cost, less loss, less room, and less labor than any 

 other hatching apparatus in use. 



From the 1st of July, when we began operations, to the 22d of August, 

 when the salmon began to spawn, work was very driving at the fishery, 

 and was sufficient to keep a dozen or more hands employed. Our work 

 crowded us all the more, from the fact that in the middle of July there 

 occurred an exceedingly heated term of nine days, during which the 



