Aiucncan Fisheries Society 195 



size before shipping. We have shipped 20,000 number 2 fingerlings and 

 have 10,000 to 15,000 on hand. They take ground liver readily, are now 

 two and one-half inches long and growing very fast. They come into 

 shallow water and feed freely from the bottom of the pond. We are 

 much encouraged in the work. 



Mr. Titcomb : I wish to supplement my remarks about how easily 

 perch eggs are hatched by saying that where one is not particular about 

 knowing the actual number hatched, perhaps the simplest and most 

 economical method of handling them is in floating boxes. Go to any 

 lake or river where perch are taken during the spawning season, put 

 your floating boxes in, fill them with eggs and let nature take its course. 

 You simply save the eggs and protect them until they hatch. 



Mr. S. W. Downing : Mr. Titcomb's method is all right if the water 

 is clear, but if it is as roily as it was this season in Lake Erie, the eggs 

 will become so loaded with silt that they will settle to the bottom and 

 smother. We had at our station this spring something like ten and a 

 half million perch eggs in Downing jars, two and a half quarts to the 

 jar, and during most of the time we had to feather them twice a day 

 to remove the silt. 



Mr. Titcomb : Where floating boxes are used it is better to have 

 them in a current such as that of a river. In a lake or where there is 

 no current I think that roily water would cause trouble. 



Mr. Downing : The water was unusually roily this year. 



Mr. Titcomb : Under such conditions the eggs would have to be 

 feathered. 



Dr. Barton W. Evermann : Mr. Bower asked me a question regard- 

 ing the geographic distribution of yellow perch. It is abundant all 

 across the northern portion of the United States from New Brunswick 

 to the Lake of the Woods and perhaps Lake Winnipeg, and then south 

 through the lakes of Minnesota, Iowa, and the eastern part of 

 the Dakotas ; in Northern Illinois, Northern Indiana and all through 

 the Great Lakes region. I think it is not native anywhere 

 south of middle Indiana in the Mississippi Valley States, although it 

 has been occasionally taken in the Wabash River. It is found down the 

 Atlantic coast to the Potomac and perhaps slightly beyond. It has been 

 introduced on the Pacific coast and is now abundant about Seattle and 

 the various lakes in Washington, Oregon and California. 



I notice in a paper recently prepared by the Census office, giving the 

 fisheries product of the State of Oregon, that the catch of perch in 

 Oregon was quite large. I know from personal observation that the 

 yellow perch is very abundant in Washington, Union and Greenwood 

 lakes and various lakes about Seattle. 



To what extent the yellow perch may be introduced in more southern 

 waters, of course, remains to be determined. The way to find out is to 

 try it. But it is not a river fish in the Mississippi Valley as it is along 

 the Atlantic coast, where it is both a lal^e Jind river fish. 



