486 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [10] 
eggs or their milt; for they nearly all weigh from 15 to 20 pounds (often 
more) and are not easily managed. <A veritable struggle with the fish 
has to be gone through; a struggle all the more fatiguing, as the back 
has to be bent in order to be able to gather the spawn.”!_ Frequently 
the men have their hands lacerated by the rays of the fins or by the 
hard teeth of the male fish, which inflict painful and slow-healing 
wounds. 
It should, moreover, be remembered that this operation has frequently 
to be carried on during the night, when the air is quite cool; for in this 
mountainous region the nights are, during the summer season, as cold 
as the days are hot. The station men who have often, during day time, 
to do hard work in a2 broiling sun, at a temperature of 54° C., are fre- 
quently at night while engaged in fishing or in artificial fecundation 
subjected to a cold air of +11° C., and, moreover, with their clothes con- 
stantly soaked in ice-water. Very few of them escape the consequences 
of such fatigues and exposure to a rapidly changing temperature; and 
this generally shows itself even during the first week by attacks of 
fever and rheumatic pains. Onty men possessed of very strong consti- 
tutions can stand this work and carry it on without interruption. 
‘In spite of all these difficulties the number of eggs gathered and 
fecundated every day generally exceeds 300,000, and often goes as high 
as 800,000 or 900,000. The gathering, that is the spawning, commences 
generally about the 20th of August, and comes to a close about the 15th 
or 18th of September. 
The incubating process takes place in wooden troughs arranged par- 
allel to each other on a scaffolding about breast high, and sheltered 
by a vast tent 20 meters long and 10 meters broad. These troughs, to 
the number of ten, are grouped two by two, leaving sufficient space 
between them to allow the watchful care and the manipulations which 
the eggs require. Each large trough is formed of three smaller ones, 
five meters long, placed end to end, with a difference of level of a few 
centimeters, to give fall to the water which is necessary to keep it 
fresh. In spite of the rapidity of the current and a sufficient quantity 
of water, the eggs at the end of the troughs are sometimes exposed to 
a lack of oxygen, the water having yielded to the eggs higher up the 
greater portion of the air which it contained.” 
“But as the object is not to keep the fish, and as it consequently does not matter 
even if the fish are a little hurt, skillful operators often manipulate only small salmon. 
They hold the head of the fish tightly between their knees, hold the tail in the left 
hand, and with the right extract the eggs or the milt. Large fish often require two 
or three men to manage them. The salmon which have thus been operated upon are 
abandoned to the Indians of the neighborhood, whose friendship and even aid in this 
difficult work is thus gained, at least to a certain point. 
Mr. Livingston Stone states that, especially towards the last period of the embry- 
onic evolution, the eggs need plenty of oxygen in the water. At the beginning of the 
batching process, the eggs may, without any detriment, be heaped up in the appa- 
ratus and exposed to a feeble current; but from the time the embryo becomes dis- 
tinctly visible, great care should be taken to spread the eggs on the frames, and to 
make the current as rapid as possible, 
