24 Report of the American 



be taken care of with one half the labor reqinred for any hatching appa- 

 ratus that I have seen. I have used ten of Helton's boxes in our State 

 Hatching house this winter, and find them a great success in hatching 

 salmon, salmon trout, brook trout, and whitefish. 



I have hatched fifteen ditferent kinds of fish artificialh^, viz : brook 

 trout, whitefish, herring, shad, Otsego bass, wall-eyed pike, salmon trout? 

 salmon, red side suckers, creek suckers, shiners, white and yellovf perch, 

 mullet, striped bass, frogs and lobsters. 



SALMON BREEDING AT BUCKSPORT. 



BY CHARLES G. ATKINS. 



The method of obtaining salmon eggs pursued at Buckspoi't is ex- 

 tremely artificial. The parent fish are caught in June, in the tidal part 

 of the Penobscot river, before thej' have ever entered fresh water, are 

 transported in drays overland to a fresh water pond that was never 

 naturally frequented by salmon, and in its character is far enough re- 

 moved from their ideal haunts, and there confined within an inclosure of 

 nets from June till November, are then caught again in traps or seines, 

 and deprived of their eggs and milt by artificial manipulation, marked 

 with metal tags and sent back to the river on drays. The eggs are 

 fertilized by mixing the milt with them in a pan without water, and 

 and developed on wire cloth trays in wooden troughs, and are for the 

 most part packed up in moss and sent away in February- and March to 

 be hatched elsewhere. 



All previous efforts at the collection of salmon eggs of which I am 

 informed were made in the immediate vicinity of the natural spawning 

 grounds, and the parent fish were never taken until the near approach of 

 the spawning season, when they had been a long time in fresh water. 

 At the outset of this experiment, therefore, there were no examples from 

 which to learn the best modes of proceeding or to augur success or 

 failure, and there were not wanting reasons for thinking the latter quite 

 as probable as the former. The unknown quantities in the problem were 

 numerous. It was not known whether, of the salmon caught in salt 

 water near the mouths of the rivers in early summer, all or in fact any 

 were going to p^'oduce eggs and milt at the coming spawning season. It 

 was not known whether they would survive the handling to which they 

 must be subjected in capture and transportation, or, if they did survive, 



