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NINTH ANNUAL MEETING. 21 
vided during all the time of their separation from their natural 
habitat with an artificial atmosphere ; and not simply this, but 
the atmosphere provided them must be constantly in process of 
creation. I need hardly say that this characteristic does not be- 
long to the carrying of other creatures, birds, animals, insects, 
nephtes, or plants. Puta bird in a cage and set the cage in the 
express car of your train and nature will provide all the atmos- 
pheric conditions required. Secure an animal on the deck of a 
vessel, or shut him up in acattle-car, and nature furnishes his 
lungs with air enough without any trouble or thought on your 
part. So with other creatures, until you come to fishes ; then a 
radical change takes place in the requirements of the situation. 
Place half a dozen pound-trout in July in as many gallons of 
water, and put them aboard the train, and they will all be dead 
in ten minutes, if indeed they live to get on the train at all, un- 
less you keep constantly at work over them creating the atmos- 
pheric conditions just mentioned as being indispensable to their 
existence ; and it must not be forgotten that you must not only 
provide them at the outset with an artificial atmosphere, but you 
must keep creating it every moment as you go along, till they 
reach their journey’s end. It is this peculiarity about the trans- 
portation of living fishes that makes it so laborious, so difficult, 
and often so unsuccessful. It is this that makes such care, such 
painstaking, such watchfulness necessary. For not a moment, 
day or night, can the water in the tanks be left to take care of 
itself, and if you are travelling with any considerable variety of 
species, hardly a moment can the temperature be left to itself. 
If, after days and nights perhaps of almost incessant labor, you 
are overcome with sleep, and unconsciously let the temperature 
pass the fatal limit, you wake to find your fishes dead beyond 
recovery, and all your past labor on them gone for nothing. Or, 
if in an unguarded hour, perhaps exhausted from labor and want 
of sleep, you let too great an interval pass without aerating the 
water, you find to your dismay that your fish that you have 
worked over so long and faithfully are hopelessly lost. Such is 
the painstaking and watchful character of the work of trans- 
porting living fishes, imposed upon it by this peculiar neces- 
sity of having a constantly renewed atmosphere artificially pro- 
