American Fisheries Society. 18] 
seven—I did not get home till 10 o’clock, and the men were a 
little ahead of me. I went up to where I let the water out and 
found my bass piled four deep, some dead, some part dead, some 
just breathing vet. I called the men, and I don’t know whether 
I lost my head, or what, but 1 waded into it, and began to throw 
them out. I just took them over to the next pond and did every- 
thing I could to revive them and I saved out of the 170, 38. 
After I got my pond cleaned out I put the dead fish into the ice- 
house and examined them. I looked down their throats and 
found they were plugged up with mud and moss. I opened 
them and found the entire stomachs were full of mud and moss. 
The only theory I can give for the death of those fish was that 
these ttle minnows in this pond went down into this deep water 
in the morning at four or five o’clock, and these.old fish discov- 
ered them, and they banked these little fellows two feet out of 
water on the bank, and tried to get them, going after them with 
their mouths open, and they would catch the bank and filled 
themselves up with this moss and mud, for their stomachs were 
full of it. There was none out in the deep water; the water was 
not a bit roily; but there they lay all on a pile, in a row twenty 
feet long, and wherever I found them I found the little chubs 
lying up on the bank. Now if anybody can give me the reason 
for the death of those fish in so short a time, | would like to 
know it. 
Dr. Birge: What became of those that you put over into the 
other pond. 
Mr. Morcher: They were all right. 
Mr. O’Brien: How many thousand do you carry on a car? 
A. Seventy thousand or seventy-five thousand. We have 
eleven large tanks in each car. ‘Then we generally fill a number 
of cans and have them in the aisle to deliver at the first station. 
Mr. Titcomb: I hope Mr. Morcher will count his fish next 
fall. I do not believe he is carrying so many as he thinks. We 
carry as many as we think we can carry safely, but we cannot 
do any such work as that. I think the only way to settle that is 
to count them. 
