WHITE PEECH, SMELTS, ETC. 213 



eggs so adhesive that they form a thick mat. 

 They become so firmly attached to the bottom 

 and to each other that it is difficult to remove 

 them without damaging a great quantity and 

 taking along stones and gravel. The fish en- 

 ter the streams in such crowds that I have seen 

 bottoms thickly covered by eggs almost from 

 shore to shore, and for a distance of over 100 

 yards. 



New York was the first state to undertake the 

 propagation of the smelt, and its fishery au- 

 thorities hatched from 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 

 annually. The smelts are caught in nets and 

 transported to troughs on the hatchery grounds 

 similar in construction to a trout-hatching 

 trough, but without gravel of any kind. About 

 eight inches of water is flowed through them, 

 and the apparatus is kept covered by boards. 

 Smelts do not seem to mind their capture and 

 yield their spawn freely. The eggs are so 

 minute that it requires nearly 500,000 to fill a 

 quart-measure. 



Every morning, the hatchery men shovel 

 the eggs from the troughs into buckets partly 

 filled with water. The thick masses of eggs are 



