AN IMPROVEMENT IN HATCHING AND REARING BOXES. IOI9 



joint undertaking — have a much deeper purpose in view than the efficient 

 impregnation of the eggs alone. Their instinct also teaches them that the eggs, 

 without an adequate supply of oxygen, will not come to unimpaired maturity, 

 but will produce weakly alevins, and that unless a current of water passes over 

 the eggs while incubation is proceeding they will not obtain a requisite amount 

 of oxygen. Here it appears to me that the dumb instinct of the fish is far 

 superior to the reasoning power of man, as exemplified by the latter's idea of a 

 suitable form of box for the artificial hatching of fish eggs. You will therefore 

 see why I asked, a short way back, whether eggs incubated in a rectangular 

 hatching box are properly oxygenated by the water in its upward progress 

 toward the outlet. 



On this side of the Atlantic, wherever in the country districts there occur 

 diverging roads, a handing post to indicate the direction and distance of adja- 

 cent villages and towns is erected by the local authorities. Among our rural 

 folk, whose sense of humor is not of a wildly extravagant character, it is a 

 standing joke that their spiritual guides are like handing posts because they 

 point the way to all and sundry and never follow it themselves. But the pisci- 

 cultural writers of my acquaintance can not be held altogether free from some- 

 thing of the same reproach. To a man they impress on their readers the neces- 

 sity of extreme cleanliness as an absolute essential to success in pisciculture. 

 No one will be inclined to dispute the soundness of this advice until he attempts 

 to put it into application. Then he will be compelled, probably with some 

 reluctance, to confess he has attempted an impossible task. Leaving "extreme " 

 cleanliness out of the question, it will be found that even ordinary cleanliness 

 can not be observed, and for this reason: The rectangular hatching box is, 

 de facto, merely a pocket of water which can admit, but which, owing to the 

 position of the outlet, can not eject, extraneous matter that may enter it. It 

 therefore follows that when the alevins have arrived at the fry stage and require 

 feeding, any particles of food that they happen to miss must in the natural 

 order of things gravitate to the bottom of the box, where they become satu- 

 rated with water, decompose, and generate fungus. In this connection it must 

 not be forgotten that animal tissue, however carefully it is treated in converting 

 it into fish food, can never lose its identity as animal tissue. Its juices may be 

 dissipated and dried up by the application of heat and its substance by hard 

 pounding reduced to the finest powder, but its tendency to decompose is only 

 dormant and will actively assert itself immediately the powder or any portion 

 of it is brought under the influence of moisture. The filthy and insanitary 

 condition of the interior of a rectangular box after fry have been hand fed in 

 it for a few days can therefore be better imagined than described. My remarks 

 on this head are of course dictated by the assumption that the methods followed 

 by American and English pisciculturists are identical, viz, that the fry are 



