American Fisheries Society. sla by, 
about twenty-two to the inch in your little trough here and it does 
not seem to me that it works out quite correctly. 
Mr. Titcomb: -In the first place, I think Mr. Clark’s measure 
is too liberal and in the second place, when he says 22 to the inch 
and you are considering millions of eggs by this chart you must 
get your diameter down very fine; the diameters given in our 
manual, when you come to figure them for this purpose, are 
entirely too inaccurate. ‘The manual says 1-7 or 1-16 of an inch, 
etc., and the table ought to be revised. You will find when you 
get your base right and get an accurate diameter of any particu- 
lar species and the actual number of eggs to the quart of that 
oo" 
particular species, from it you can make your curve. I would not 
say that this curve is safe for a future basis now, but it will be 
made so. We are trying to get other counts and diameters as 
accurately as we did that, before we make this a conclusive thing ; 
but the mathematics of it is correct and I think you will find it 
is going to work out and be useful. 
Mr. Clark: That is what I am trying to get at. It is not 
conclusive yet. What 1 based the twenty-two to the inch on, the 
way I measured them, is an inch between knife blades. 
Mr. Titcomb: Take the measure accurately by machinery 
and you get it a little more closely. 
Dr. Bean: This subject is one of very great practical in- 
terest, and I trust that the mathematics of the curve by which 
the number of eggs is worked out will be, and I suppose has been, 
based upon a large number of counts of individual eggs, because 
every one knows that eggs of any species have an individual as 
well as a geographic variation. For example, Mr. Clark finds 
150,000 pike-perch eggs to the quart; at Constantia they have 
130,000. This is perhaps due to the fact that the spawning fish 
from Oneida Lake run rather smaller on the average than the 
spawning fish from which the United States Bureau obtains its 
eggs. But I wish to emphasize the necessity of containing the 
counts of eggs so as to eliminate individual and geographic var- 
jations; and then the scale, it seems to me, would be a great 
boon to our practical workers. 
