640 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [8] 
ing point. Plunged it in snow and water. The long Wilder thermom- 
eter in use now at the house is just right at 329 F. The oil-testing 
thermometer of Widdifield also shows 4° below the 52° mark. The 
latter will hereafter be used at the stream-hatching house. 
November 27.—Drageged the nets, except cross-net, out of water, and 
hung up in spawning: shed. 
November 30.—Left for Bucksport early in the morning. 
January 7, 18381.—Returned from Bucksport yesterday. The new 
hatching house at Forbes’ Cove is boarded, roof shingled, single upper 
floor laid, upper windows in. S. S. Sprague and George Macartney 
have been at work at it most of the time since I left, and at that time 
I had had perhaps $15 worth of work done on excavation. The water 
appears to be in fair supply, and the little pool under the rock, near the 
corner of the hatching house, has not frozen over at all. : 
At the old hatching house the water is getting very low. The meas- 
urement to-day gives 8.919 gallons per minute. Of this I find by meas- 
urement that the north aqueduct yields 1.875 gallons (or say 1.919), and 
of the remainder I judge from temperatures that the brook gives one- 
seventh and the main spring six-sevenths (say one gallon and six gal- 
lons per minute. In the rough, one gallon, six gallons, and two gallons). 
Temperature of main spring to-day, 42°; of north aqueduct, 39°; of 
brook water, 35°; of water in troughs, 41°. All the eggs are appar- 
ently doing well. I looked at several lots from both upper and lower 
ends of trough, and could distinguish no difference. All the embryos 
that I saw were strong, with good color and well marked veins. They 
are all fit to ship, ‘but I think the oldest can wait two or three weeks. 
safely. I shall, however, try to send some away immediately, for we 
have somany that we must send in two or three batches, first clearing the 
house, and then bringing out another lot from the stream to develop, and 
finally a third batch. I hardly dare to bring out next time as many eggs 
as we have now in the old house (855,000), for I am not satisfied that it 
is safe with 9 gallons of water—the present limit. 
This afternoon Mr. Munson turns some of the earliest eggs, prepar- 
atory to picking out unfertilized. He performs the operation thus: 
He brings the stack to the table, capsizes them into a long, shallow 
pan of water, pours them from this pan into a common milk-pan, and 
then pours them from milk-pan to milk-pan five times, holding the pan 
about 8 inches high each time. He says this is sufficient, according to 
his observation, and does not injure the good eggs. [I find subsequently 
that there is quite a percentage in some of the trays of unfertilized eggs 
remaining clear after this operation, and think it would be better to 
have the pan held 1 foot high each time, but Mr. Munson thinks these 
instances were on trays turned by some one else than himself.] After 
turning, the eggs.are replaced on the trays and remain a day or two, 
when they are picked over, Those turned to-day will be picked to- 
morrow and packed Monday. 
