l6 AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



Mr. Mather. — Quite shallow and running- over stones. J 

 have seen them in New Jersey pretty well up on the Hackensack 

 River, and I have seen them at Locust Valley on Long Island 

 where they take them, and they are both rajiid streams. The 

 stream at Locust Valley is a trout stream, very swift, running 

 very rapid, and the eggs which we took last year on stones and 

 placed in our hatching troughs, where we hatch the brcujk trout 

 eggs, all came to nothing — that is those in a single layer, but 

 where there were four or five deep we could pick off the top 

 layer of bad eggs and find them good underneath. 



Mr. Clark. — I would like to ask Mr. Mather a question. 

 What percentage did I understand you to say — that vou had 

 forty to fifty per cent, good eggs ? 



Mr. Mather. — That is about what we have now. 



Mr. Clark. — Well, Mr. Chairman, I don't think with any ad- 

 hesive eggs that were ever hatched, wiiere you leave them to 

 adhere, I don't think there is anybody ever hatched anything 

 better than forty or fifty per cent, of anv kind, and I don't think 

 they ever will. We don't with the herring, and we call it good. 



Dr. Sweeney. — It seems to me that from all the eggs that arc 

 supplied in the spawning of these fish whose eggs are glutinous 

 or adhesive, there is a provision of nature that the outer layer 

 of the eggs act as a protective coat to the inner mass, and as 

 the gas permeates through the tissues and the air reaches the 

 eggs on the principle of displacement — as the internal layer of 

 eggs consumes the air, it is resupplied from the outside, and 

 this putrid mass of eggs on the outside which seems so unpro- 

 ductive, may be in part as a defense also against animals, and 

 is not the experience of Mr. Mather going to show that these eggs 

 that seem to be spoiled on the outside, work no detriment to 

 those within. That may be the principle, that the adhering mass 

 of eggs is a protective coat to the inner stratum. It may be the 

 explanation that the gas or vitalized air from the water reaches 

 the eggs through the outer stratum. 



