234 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



result, and was of the opinion I could do better if I 

 could get the eggs for another trial. 



On the 1 6th day of May of the same year I left for 

 St. Clair River, where pike spawn much later than 

 on any other grounds that I know of. Usually they 

 begin to spawn as soon as the ice goes out of the 

 river, lake or bay, as the case may be; but on the St. 

 Clair River they do not begin to spawn until the I5th 

 of May. I succeeded in collecting 20,000,000 eggs 

 on this river, which I took with me to the hatchery. 

 Of this batch we hatched 3,500,000 fry, as is shown 

 by my report for that year, which was a small per- 

 centage of the number of eggs taken. 



In the spring of 1878 I again went to Saginaw Bay 

 to collect pike eggs. While there I met Mr. Orin M. 

 Chase, of the Michigan Fish Commission, to whom I 

 related my experience and partial failure with pike 

 eggs the previous year. After Mr. Chase had been 

 there a few days he showed me the eggs he had taken, 

 and said : "Jim, I will hatch 90 per cent, of these 

 eggs." I told him I would call around and see his 

 eggs before they began to hatch. Mr. Chase left for 

 the Detroit hatchey with his eggs; at the same time 

 I started for the Sandwich hatchery with those I had 

 taken. Just before the fish began to hatch, I visited 

 the Detroit hatchery to compare notes with Mr. Chase. 

 Mr. Chase told me, "Tfre jig is up ; I will not hatch 

 five per cent, of the eggs I took." T secured that sea- 

 son from Saginaw Bay and St. Clair River 50,000,- 

 ooo eggs, and hatched and planted 6,000,000 fry from 

 those eggs. 



The difficulty in this work was the adhesiveness of 

 the eggs. We could not keep them from sticking to- 

 gether. For days after they were put in jars they 



