24 AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



On the 4th of Marcli, Mr. Walters returned with one hundred 

 and twenty fish nearly ripe and a fair proportion of each sex. 

 Eight had died on the journey from being- caught in gill-nets 

 when so nearly ripe, five more died shortly after, and all were 

 more or less injured. From one of the five dead fish I tocjk 

 30,000 eggs after the fish had been dead fifteen minutes, using a 

 live male. The eggs were taken on a bunch of coarse meadow- 

 grass and suspended in a glass tank with a flow of water from 

 a i^-inch cock, and in three days many were dead, and all died 

 at a week old. On the 5th, I repeated the experiment with a 

 dying female. In five day three dead eggs showed, the sixth 

 day 100 dead, seventh day one-fourth of the lot were dead. Up 

 to the 1 7th, the thirteenth day after taking, there was little change, 

 and on the 20th the eggs were put in a box outside the hatchery 

 in swift water, as they began to show fungus. March 26th, about 

 one-half were alive, and these were in bunches covered by dead 

 eggs and fungus. All the outside eggs were dead, and I had 

 little hopes of saving any. On April 3rd the fish could be plainly 

 seen in the lower eggs by removing the coating of dead eggs and 

 fungus which had covered them for two weeks. The eggs were 

 again placed in the aquarium and 2,000 hatched on April nth, 

 and on the i6th, g,ooo more hatched and the rest were bad. About 

 one-third of the eggs hatched under conditions which seemed 

 hopeless, and under which it would be impossible to hatch the 

 egg of a salmon or a trout. When the last ones hatched, the 

 mass of dead eggs was rotten and foul. The temperature ranged 

 from 40 to 42 degrees Fahr. In taking the eggs the grass was 

 laid in a milk pan and covered with water. The female was 

 manipulated first, and as the eggs do not stick fast untill some 

 minutes after being taken, perhaps after impregnation takes 

 place, they were distributed evenly over the grass with the tail 

 of a fish. 



Knowing nothing of smelt hatching, the literature of which is 

 meager, we determined to try several plans. On March 5th^ 

 Mr. Walters took about 50,000 eggs from a weak female on 

 stones the size of a man's fist, in water, and placed them outside 

 the building in a covered waste trough which takes the water 

 from the house to the ponds. The current was slow but the eggs 



