138 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FIS;iiE!,Il>". 10] 



resting ou legs wbicb kept it 2 inches off tlie floor of the tiuik, t])e top 

 of tlie hatcher being above the water-line. In this were inserted three 

 l)ieces of rubber tubing, so arranged as to give a continuous movement 

 to the water around the tank in one direction, the go:d eggs to be 

 kei)t floating and the bad ones sinking. This was a copy of Captain 

 Chester's arrangement, made a trifle deeper, and of zinc. I also ob- 

 tained a pork barrel and put a brass cock in the bottom, to which was 

 attached a rubber tube, which, by raising or lowering, regulated the 

 height of water in the barrel, or drew it off entirely. A rubber tube 

 from the supi)ly pijjc above dropped into the barrel and delivered the 

 water with a slight inclination upward and around it. So far no op- 

 l)ortnnity has oifered to test these hatchers. At present it is pro])osed 

 to >send a smack hv.ul of live cod to be kept here in cars until ripe. If 

 this is done early next vseason, before the harbor freezes, no doubt niany 

 good eggs may be obtained. I never saw codflsh eggs float until I saw 

 them do so at Wood's Holl, but early in December, 1884, my assistant, 

 Mr. F. A. Walters, obtained eggs at Fulton Market which floated in 

 water taken from Cold Spring Harbor. These are referred to above. 

 At the meeting of the American Fish-Cultural Association, in Wash- 

 ington, in May, 1884, in reply to a question from Mr. E. G. Blackford, 

 Prof. John A. Ryder said : 



" My experience with codfish eggs, both at Fulton Market and 

 at Wood's Holl, has been quite extensive. Our greatest success in 

 handling these eggs has been in comparatively salt water, as Colonel 

 McDonald can testify. The eggs taken at Wood's Holl were from fish 

 that had been kept under the same conditions as those in Fulton 

 Market. At the former place the eggs would float as they should 

 normally, but at Fulton Market they had no tendenc.v to float as did 

 the eggs irom the more northern locality. 1 also observed that in most 

 cases the eggs had an abnormal appearance. The vitellus was dis- 

 organized, and the vitelline matter and germinal material were pulled 

 out of sh.ape. The germinal disk was formed, but defectively ; in many 

 instances, after formation, it had been broken into irregular fragments, 

 which were certainly not characteristic of normal segmentation. What 

 the cause was I cannot say, but I believe that the confinement of parent 

 female fish of any species would have a tendency to interfere with the 

 fertility of the ova. That has been the experience at Havre de Grace 

 with the shad, and I should not be surprised if the confinement of 

 female cod in the wells of the fishing smacks and in the cars would 

 tend to cause the eggs which were mature and still contained in the 

 ovaiies, to become, to a certain extent, disorganized and therefore in- 

 capable of fertilization. My conclusions have been formed deliijcrately, 

 although the data have been very imperfect. There was this imi>ortant 

 difference between the eggs taken at Wood's Holl an<l Fulton Market. 

 Th(» latter exhibited a decided tendency to sink, which in our Wood's 

 Holl experiment we always associated with a condition indicating that 



