PRACTICAL CARP CULTURE. 127 



ten feet apart ; then I took the other two and laid them across the first 

 two twelve feet apart and bolted them firmly together with four 1x14 inch 

 bolts. Then for the ends of the building I set the boards up end ways and 

 nailed them on the inside of the end sills ; then eighteen inches above the 

 end sills I put in another set of light sills 4x4, all around the outside, then 

 nailed the sideboards on the inside like the ends but only let them come 

 down to the upper sills so there will be an open space eighteen inches 

 high and twelve feet long on each side for the slide doors on the inside. 

 All this rough frame work is always under water. After the building was 

 complete, I sawed the ice all around about eighteen feet square and kept 

 each side sawed about equal so when it broke it would go almost straight 

 down with the block of ice. I was careful to hold the saw a little slanting 

 so the block of ice was a little smaller on top than on the bottom, then it 

 would not wedge fast. The block of ice would soon melt and leave the 

 building firmly on the ground, and standing perpendicular, too. But if 

 the bottom of the pond is not level then the sills could be raised on the 

 ice before building to suit any slope of the pond bottom. That is, 

 if the bottom slopes one foot in sixteen then raise the sills with blocks of 

 ice on one side one foot high. 



I made two slide doors eighteen inches high and twelve feet wide, one 

 on each side. These slide doors are raised with ropes over pulleys and 

 fastened to a wheel with a crank to it. The doors are weighted so they 

 will sink easily. There is a moveable bottom 10x12 feet, made of common 

 boards, with some grating near each side to let the water through. This 

 floor is also weighted with about 500 pounds of old iron. It is raised with 

 ropes at each corner and over pulleys to a windlass. The fish are fed on 

 this floor until they learn to come there. I have a small rope hitched to 

 the door-post and hitched to a post in the water about six rods away. A 

 boat is rowed up to the rope and I slyly pull the boat up to the building 

 and with a key the side doors are instantly dropped. Then the floors are 

 lifted with windlass at leisure. It is fun to see the big fish make the 

 water boil then. This six rod rope comes very handy on a windy day to 

 make a landing at the house. I soon found it was too much of a chore to 

 go so far to feed the fish on this floor regularly, so I took an old eight-day 

 clock, took out the springs and in their place put spools large enough to 

 hold cord enough to run the clock twenty or thirty days with weights. 

 The trip that sets the clock to striking every hour I took off and put a 

 moveable one on the wheel that revolves every twelve hours and then I 

 filled up eleven of the twelve holes in the spacing wheel, leaving only orfe 

 hole open, so the clock would only commence to strike every twelve hours 

 and strike seventy-eight times that is the full amount of twelve hours, 

 striking continuing to strike while the spacing wkeel would make one 

 complete revolution. I lengthened the main winding shaft and on the 

 end I put a wheel something like a water wheel that would hold as much 

 feed as I wanted to feed at once. This wheel is placed under a hopper 

 that holds several bushels of feed. The clock is set to strike at any hour 

 in the morning and evening. While the clock is striking seventy-eight 



