EXAMINATION OF WATERS OF GREAT SALT LAKE. 249 



CONCLUSIONS. 



The main body of the lake and a large part of its shores are entirely 

 unfit for the introduction of marine animals of economic value, owing 

 to the high salinity of the water. The proportional constitution of the 

 saline contents of the waters of Great Salt Lake is not vastly different 

 from that of salt water. Great Salt Lake is salt and not alkaline. 

 The physiological effect of its waters upon organisms placed therein 

 probably would not seriously differ from that of sea water were it not 

 for its high density, but to attempt to introduce fishes or other marine 

 animals into water having a specific gravity of 1.168 when they have 

 become adapted by nature to a density of but 1.025 would be an utter 

 waste of effort. 



In the Beseret Evening News of October 4, 1892, a scientist of Salt 

 Lake City is quoted as follows: 



The fear thiit scientists have expressed that fish will not live in the lake is entirely 

 groundless. Of course they would have to be introduced gradually, but that can be 

 successfullj^ done. They can be acclimated by degrees. 



It is not stated how the fishes are to be '' acclimated by degrees," 

 and the speaker apparently bases his opinion upon his repetition with 

 Artefnia gracilis of the experiments of Schmankewitsch and others upon 

 the European species Artemia salina. It is well known that Artemia 

 will live either in brine or fresh water, and in a few generations, and 

 sometimes even in one generation, its form will become so changed by 

 an alteration in density that it is referred to a different genus. Other 

 phyllopods exhibit the same adaptability, but that fact does not furnish 

 sufficient basis for a generalization such as has been quoted. 



Similar experiments have not been made with fishes nor with the 

 higher Crustacea, although the anadromous species like the shad and 

 the Atlantic salmon experience no ill effects from their periodic migra- 

 tion from sea water into the fresh-water rivers, and vice versa. Some 

 years ago the LTnited States Fish Commission made a plant of shad in 

 the Jordan River, but, with the exception of one or two, the fish were 

 never heard from. It is well known that the oyster will not thrive in 

 water of full oceanic density. No oyster beds are found along our 

 coasts at any distance from sources of fresh or brackish water, and in 

 a density of 1,023, a salinity less than one-seventh that of Great Salt 

 Lake, they are small and of very inferior quality, usually growing 

 between tide marks, sometimes on the shores and often on piles, man- 

 groves, and other fixed bodies to which they attach. 



The process of evolution has made the oyster an organism adapted 

 to live in brackish or semisalt water, despite the fact that on our coasts 

 there is ample opportunity foi: it to acclimate itself "by degrees" to 

 water of full oceanic density, or, on the other hand, for it to extend its 

 habitat up the rivers into fresh water. 



The optimum density for oyster-culture is between the specific gravi- 

 ties of 1.010 and 1.020, which range in Great Salt Lake is to be found 

 only near the mouths of rivers which flow into the lake on the eastern 



