80 
there is no glutinous’ coating around the egg of the 
smelt that will enable it to adhere at any point, and the 
frequent breaking of the hold of this foot makes it 
powerless to adhere to other eggs or to any object, and 
leaves the eggs as free and clean as those of whitefish 
or shad, and enables the attendant to remove all bad 
eggs from the top, as is done with other eggs hatched 
in jars. 
Last year I was greatly interested in the paper read 
by Prof. Jacob Reighard of the University of Michigan, 
“On the Handling of Adhesive Eggs,” and of his use 
of corn starch to overcome the adhesive tendency in the 
eggs of pike-perch, and had thought of testing that 
method with smelt eggs, but they worked so well with 
a few siftings, that it did not seem necessary to try any 
other method. The eggs remained free and clean, with 
the exception of those in one jar, which were taken from 
the brook, that retained sand on some of them that 
would not permit the dead ones to rise. 
A resume of my work in stocking a barren stream 
with smelts for the New York Fishery Commission will 
illustrate the value of such work in a manner that can 
only be shown when fry of any fish are placed in waters 
which did not contain them before. Adjoining the 
grounds of the Commission at Cold Spring Harbor, 
Long Island, is a short stream from the overflow of a 
mill pond. This stream is not over 600 feet long between 
the dam and salt water, at high tide, and is about 15 feet 
wide, with pools and shallows where the water ripples 
over pebbles and is not 2 inches deep. This stream I] 
stocked with smelts in a small way in 1885, and it is 
now a fine smelt stream. 
In that year, and for several years afterward, we 
bought live smelts from the Connetquot River,* a small 
stream os te ae center ths Long Island, north of 


*In the reports the printers have usually made this the Connecticut River, and 
this note is to warn them that the above spelling is correct. 
‘ 
