126 Tiventy-ninth Annual Meeting 



dictions will be verified, but I must confess to being skeptical. If 

 it is true that they discharge their eggs because they are held in 

 the nets, that makes the work simple, but if that is true, why do 

 not the fishermen catch hundreds of spent fish. I think that 

 the fishermen capture possibly a dozen or two spent fish near 

 Delaware City in an entire season, where there are not less than 

 a thousand nets ; possibly that is an exaggeration — I will say 

 five hundred nets, but more sturgeon are caught there than any- 

 where else in the country. 



As far as hatching the eggs of the sturgeon is concerned, 

 we need not worry about that. We can hatch the eggs of any 

 iish just as we hatch the eggs of the grayling or trout, in jars 

 and on trays. If we can find a place where sturgeon spawn, 

 we will guarantee next year to go there and propagate them. 

 We are prepared to do more for the sturgeon than anything else 

 except the lobster, but this spring we were unable to provide 

 money for the work. 



Mr. Dickerson : Have you ever made any effort at Lake 

 Erie? 



Mr. Ravenel : No. Dr. Henshall, I think, experimented on 

 some river in Ohio and he found but one ripe fish ; that has been 

 about the experience of everyone. Unfortunately for us the fisher- 

 men have begun to use the ripe spawn for caviare. 



Mr. Clark: I would say that our work was on two lines — 

 one to find ripe sturgeon when caught, and the other to try pen- 

 iiiing them, as .with the whitefish. We only found what might be 

 called spent fish ; that is, we would get a few eggs from each, I 

 can't tell the number, but the penning of the sturgeon in any plan 

 that we pursued was not a success. 



!Mr. Ravenel : There is no difficulty in penning the sturgeon ; 

 the trouble is in getting them so nearly ripe that we can afford to 

 hold them. We have held them for months, but got no results. 

 The sturgeon is the easiest fish to hold in the world; they tie a 

 rope to their snout and hitch them to anything. 



Mr. Clark : The trouble is in holding them and have the 

 spawn develop. They will hold their eggs until doomsday, I 

 guess. 



