Fish Oulturists' Association. 29 



thousand gallons per hour. The hatching troughs are a foot wide and 

 six inches deep ; and the most of them are twenty -three feet long. The^' 

 rest on the floor, the onl}" position practicable, owing to the low level at 

 which we are obliged to bring the water into the building. The}' are 

 quite level from end to end, except four troughs that are inclined four 

 inches. The latter have dams at frequent intervals to break and aerate 

 the water. 



The eggs are deposited on trays of iron wire cloth tacked to wooden 

 frames, and coated with water-proof varnish. This apparatus was first 

 recommended to me b}^ Mr. E. A. Brackett, of the Massachusetts Cora- 

 mission, and has proved exceedingly serviceable. Four nails, projecting 

 half an inch from the lower side of the frame of the tray, one at each 

 corner, furnish it with legs, which serve to keep it up from the bottom, 

 or from the tray beneath it, when, as isgenerallj' necessary', the trays are 

 placed in tiers one above another to economise space. A single tier of 

 trays throughout the trough will contain without crowding, a million and 

 a half of salmon eggs, and three tiers, the utmost capacity of the house 

 at present, will afford room for four-and-a-half millions. 



The troughs are all fitted with covers, so that there is no occasion to 

 exclude light from the room. During the first season the troughs, which 

 were then sixty feet long and ran lengthwise the building, were not 

 covered, but the windows were covered with white cotton cloth. Too 

 much light was thus admitted, and its effect on the eggs, both directlj- 

 and b}' encouraging the growth of confervoid vegetation in the troughs, 

 was the cause of serious mischief. The confervoid spread over the eggs 

 in some of the troughs, shut them out from the influence of the pure 

 water that was flowing above them, and exposed them to the deadly 

 influence of a stratum of stagnant water that had accumulated beneath 

 the trays in consequence of the space between them, and the bottoms of 

 the troughs being so long and narrow as to prevent the existence of a 

 current. A large number of eggs were lost in this way. All those 

 difliculties are now remedied, and the present season, with fift^y per cent, 

 more eggs, the loss up to this date (February 7,) is seventy per cent. less. 



The water used for hatching is very cold, thougii not quite as cold as 

 that used by Mr. Leonard at the Sebec Salmon Breeding Works, where 

 the temperature has been above thirty-three degrees but three days since 

 November 15th. At the Bucksport Hatching House the temperature of 

 the water ranges from thirty-two and one-half degrees to thirty- -four 

 degrees F., through the most of the winter. When the earliest eggs are 

 first deposited it is about forty-four degrees F., and before the last of 

 those kept here hatch out early in May, it rises again to the same point. 

 The lowest temperature of the whole season is experienced in April, when 

 the snow and ice are melting. 



