118 



This manipulation requires that the eggs should be 

 ladled directly into dry trays and handled quite roughly. 

 It may answer for salmon, but is not the practice that 

 we recommend, either for them or for trout. There is 

 more trouble in our method, but the results we are con 

 fident, are correspondingly superior. 



DEAD OVA. The following is taken from the Ohio 

 Report on fisheries, as it expresses our views on the pos- 

 sibilities and limits of impregnating the eggs of dead fish : 



An opinion has long been prevalent that the roe or ova of a dead 

 female fish could be fertilized by milt taken from a dead male fish; 

 in other words, it was firmly believed that the ova taken from the 

 dead fish, as they were opened and the entrails removed at the fish 

 packing-houses in Sandusky, became fertilized by the milt from 

 dead males when their entrails were removed and all cast into a 

 common heap as ofial, mingling with the ova of the females, and 

 that then and there the ova became as thoroughly fertilized or im- 

 pregnated as if both the fish were alive. Many otherwise intelli- 

 gent and well-informed persons very freely asserted that during the 

 winter months thousands of millions of young whitefish "just out 

 of the egg " were to be seen around about the wharves of the pack- 

 ing-houses in Sandusky bay. 



Believing it to be of the utmost importance in artificial repro- 

 duction of fishes to know with absolute certainty whether the ova 

 of a dead fish can be fertilized, Mr. Charles Carpenter, of Kelley's 

 Island, was instructed to institute a series of experiments to deter- 

 mine this matter beyond any peradventure. He was instructed to 

 obtain both the milt and ova of fishes dead one hour and those dead 

 several hours, and subject them to the process of fertilization ; then 

 with the milt of the dead male to fertilize the ova of a live female ; 

 then with the milt of the live male to- fertilize the ova of a dead 

 female; finally, to preserve the milt of a live fish and fertilize ova 

 directly after extrusion, with the milt, after it had been taken six, 

 twelve, eighteen, to twenty-four hours from the male. 



The results of the fertilizing experiments is to the effect that 

 immediately after the death of the fish, male or female, the ova, 

 under favorable circumstances, can be fertilized ; that the milt can be 

 preserved some hours without losing aU its fertilizing power; that 

 milt of fish within an hour after its death will fertilize almost as 



