206 Thirty-Second Annual Meeting 



same thing at previous expositions on a very small scale. We 

 have never lost such very large numbers of fish as we did in Char- 

 leston, and it is very hard for me to recollect whether the fish 

 that we lost in Buffalo which were apparently affected in the 

 same way, were fresh or salt water; but I am under the impres- 

 sion that they were fresh water fish supplied by the New York 

 State Fish Commission. 1 think that this occurred when ]\Ir. 

 Marsh was there, as he spent quite a time in Buffalo studying the 

 fungus question. 



Mr. Marsh : I do not remember any bubbles at Buffalo. 



Mr. Atkins : It seems to me that I have seen recently in 

 some publication, some method described for determining ac- 

 curately either the amount of air or the amount of oxygen in 

 water, and I think it must have been some German publication. 

 .1 have only an indistinct impression about it, and if such a thing 

 can really be devised or has been devised, it might be very useful, 

 in avoiding such troubles.* 



Mr. Marsh : Is this a practical method for any one to em- 

 ploy ? 



Mr. Atkins : That is my impression. 



Mr. Marsh : If there is I would like very much to find it. 

 A chemist takes the water in a flask and boils all the gas out col- 

 lects and determines it as a gas. 



The members can look at the fish now in the aquaria and 

 take note of what a difference the difference in temperature 

 apparently makes. You can keep the fish in aquaria to some 

 extent as you have all seen. There are fishes there and they are 

 not dying all the time, though I suppose they are dying to some 

 extent. The water is now much warmer, perhaps forty degrees 

 warmer, than when I was here first. Then it was at the freez- 

 ing point and sometimes below, and it holds the maximum 

 amount of air then. Now, with forty degrees increase in tem- 

 perature the excess of air will be much less, and it lowers the 

 death rate very markedly. In one tank of the mummichog min- 

 now, there are a great many fish, and you will see them with 

 little blisters all over their fins, but they do not die every day. 

 They have bt'cn lying there since Tuesday when T first saw them. 



*Mr, Atkins later found the method referred to, described in the Allgemeine 

 Fischerei-Zeitung, 1902, page 408. 



