8o Fish Guitarists' Association. 



not having received a report of it that it is not satisfactory, 

 because, generally, when things are very satisfactory, my assist- 

 ants are in the habit of sending information to me immediately, 

 but up to the present time I have not received any report from 

 them. However, as we are speaking upon this subject, I will 

 give you an experiment that I have tried myself. I have carried 

 the milt of a male salmon-trout about forty miles. I carried it 

 in a bottle, and I have put it upon the ova, and I produced a 

 hybrid or cross-breed fish from that mixture ; so that, to a 

 certain extent, it is true that you can carry the milt as a matter 

 of fact. I would not advise it in all cases, for I think that the 

 sooner the application is made the better. 



Mr. Edmunds : The theory in regard to the instantaneous 

 impregnation we have verified in the statement of Dr. Hastings 

 of Hartford. He claims that he put the egg of a fish under a 

 microscope and the milt was put on to the egg, and he said the 

 cell-structure changed so suddenly that he could not tell when 

 it took place — that it was perfectly instantaneous. The whole 

 cell-structure of the egg changed. 



Mr. Mather : I have seen it in the shad, but I did not find it 

 instantaneous under the microscope. I found it took perhaps 

 eight or ten minutes before you could see the first line drawn 

 through the egg — the first subdivision. As you are all aware, 

 it subdivides into two, and then into four, and the lines keep 

 crossing in that manner, and I think it was fully from eight to 

 ten minutes before we could see this change in the shad-egg, 

 and the development of the shad-egg goes on so much more 

 rapidly than the salmon that I should think the salmon would 

 take considerable time in order to see it. The shad hatches 

 quickly ; the whole fish is formed and ready to hatch in from 

 three to four days, and the same amount of development will 

 take the salmon fiftv to sixty days, or more. 



