Cobb. — College of Fisheries 59 



school, provided he can read and write English, has fair intel- 

 ligence, and a desire to increase his knowledge of the fisheries. 



In these courses we eliminated all the higher mathematics, 

 all the chemical formulas, and everything that would tend to 

 confuse a student of this type. The lectures are written out 

 in the plainest possible language. Some of these students may 

 have acquired the habit of study when they were at school, but 

 if so, most of them have been so long out of school that they 

 have lost it, so we arrange the courses so that it is unnecessary 

 for them to study at home unless they feel like it. Most of the 

 work is done in the morning so that those who are employed 

 in town, in canneries or offices, have a chance to work half a 

 day there. 



We started the first year with 40 students in the short 

 course. We could have had 80, but we refused more because 

 we had been carrying on the work for only about two months 

 at that time, our equipment was rather scanty, and we did not 

 think we could do justice to so many. We had 38 regular 

 course students, making a total of 78 students taking both 

 short and regular courses. 



We offered courses in the history of the fisheries, classi- 

 fication of aquatic animals, canning of fish and of fishery 

 products, the curing of fishery products, pickling, mild-curing, 

 smoking, the curing of herring, etc. A great deal of stress 

 has been laid upon the proper cure of herring; we teach both 

 the Scotch and the Norwegian cures. This year, in addition, 

 we are going to offer courses in pond culture, fish culture, and 

 diseases and parasites of live fish. These are the diseases and 

 parasites that the fish culturist is apt to meet with at some time 

 or other during the course of his hatchery work. We also offer 

 bacteriology of foods, which, next to canning, has been the 

 most popular course. This is not surprising when you remem- 

 ber that the greater part of the fishery business on the Pacific 

 coast is the preservation of fish by canning, salting, smoking 

 or freezing. 



Many of the fishermen also wanted to learn navigation, so 



