14 AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



and I tried a great many different experiments in taking eggs, 

 and one of the ways was taking them on glass, which I found to 

 be the best ; and I think if a person is going to take adhesive 

 eggs of any kind and let them stick to anything, he will find 

 glass the best of anything. At that time I made a box for hatch- 

 ing on glass. It was a small trough, with places in the side for 

 the glass to slide down. One glass went to the bottom and the 

 top was half an inch under water. The next glass stood half an 

 inch above the water like that, so on down through, keeping the 

 eggs that adhered to the glass on the side toward the water, so 

 that the water passed up right by the eggs, and in that way we 

 succeeded in hatching a better percentage than in any other way. 

 I should think it would be well to try experiments with the 

 smelt the same as they do with the wall-eyed pike, which I think 

 Mr. Nevins and others have tried. I have, and I think the 

 Michigan Commission has tried the same thing. 



Mr. Mather. — Mr. President, I would say in connection with 

 what Mr. Clark has said, that I had read very carefully his ex- 

 periments with the herring, and thought that his arrangement 

 of glass slides was an excellent thing. As I understand it, that 

 is for hatching in troughs, we have put them on the inside of a 

 jar, as I have described, keeping them whirling and letting them 

 adhere on a thin layer, I have now a theory, which of course 

 'remains to be proved, that it is the light that is fatal, because we 

 find where those eggs adhere in masses, perhaps the size of a 

 hickory nut or larger, that all the outside eggs become bad after 

 a while and are covered with fungus, but you take hold of this 

 mass and break it open and you will find the little fellow inside 

 there all right, protected not only from the action of the light, 

 but from the water. I don't understand how water can get into 

 this mass. If I had been going to hatch them in troughs I 

 should certainly have used the apparatus that Mr. Clark devised, 

 and which I think is an exceedingly good thing for that mode 

 of hatching. 



Mr. BissELL. — I would like to say a word about that smelt 

 business. If it is the light that affects the eggs of the smelt, 

 would not the light affect them in their natural condition in a 



