IOl8 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



scientific point of view, wooden appliances leave more to be desired than they 

 give. Not only are they heavy, unwieldy, and liable to leakage at odd and 

 inconvenient moments, but they have the additional disadvantage of becoming 

 water sodden and readily receptive to the spores of fungus. With the object 

 of preventing any possibility of attack from this, the pisciculturist's most 

 insidious enemy, the services of the charring iron are brought into requisition 

 to antisepticize the interior of the box by superficial carbonization. A more 

 brilliant method of holding in check an ever-present evil of any kind has seldom 

 or never been devised. The only fault that can be foimd with it is that when 

 those parts of the box which have undergone carbonization are subjected to 

 the action of water any antiseptic properties they may have possessed while 

 dry rapidly disappear, and in a short time the last state of that box as a fungus- 

 fighting appliance is worse than its first. The mischief does not, however, 

 end here. In the course of a few days the inside of the box up to water level — 

 assuming, of course, that it is in use — becomes covered with a viscid slime, and 

 this, in conjunction with the roughened, semispongy substance of the carbonized 

 wood, forms a secure resting place on which particles of excrement and of 

 unconsumed food, as the case may be, can decompose and generate a more or 

 less plentiful crop of fungus. 



Turning to the form of the box, what do we find there? The supply, whether 

 it falls in from above or is so arranged that it enters from below, has to force 

 itself against the whole volume of the contents of the box, and consequently 

 its force is expended and ceases to make itself felt before it has, at the outside, 

 reached more than 3 inches from its point of entry. In other words, it is 

 absorbed into and assimilates with the water into which it is poured instead of 

 forming, as it should, a gentle current running over the eggs from end to end 

 of the box. This raises a question as interesting as it is important scientifically 

 and commercially, viz, are the eggs under conditions such as these, which in 

 no wise conform to natural conditions, properly oxygenated by the water in 

 its upward progress toward the outlet? Furthermore, is the passage of the 

 water from the inlet to the outlet equal or intermittent? In regard to each 

 I hold an opinion which is not an affirmative one, but I leave the definite 

 solution of this very interesting problem to those who have more time and 

 opportunities at their disposal than I have for carrying out the necessary 

 experiments. 



No doubt many of you have watched a pair of trout making preparations 

 for spawning, and as you have watched you have wondered at the marvelous 

 instinct which prompts the male fish to select a point above the redd, i. e., the 

 spawning bed, with just sufficient stream to carry the milt as he discharges it 

 in a milky cloud over the eggs which have been deposited by his mate. But 

 the two fish — and to the lady must be accorded her fair share of credit in their 



