THIRTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. ey 
is hardly more than justice, perhaps to state that the fungus in 
all probability was in these cases, whatever it may be in the 
other cases, a secondary rather than a primal cause of death. 
While death was thus making sad havoc inthe ranks of these 
beautiful fishes which were kept in the running Croton water 
down-stairs, those which I had taken, very soon after their 
arrival up-stairs into the laboratory and placed in a small 
aquarium of moderately warm water, were getting along nicely 
and were not troubled at all with the fungus. I then requested 
that four or five of these specimens affected with the fungus 
should be taken from the tank and sent up to me to be treated 
with a salt bath. I prepared the bath by placing three or four 
handsful of coarse salt in a small quantity of water, and then 
heated it over the fire until the salt was all dissolved. 
Cold water was then added until the whole was a temperture 
of about 60 degrees, when the fish were taken very gently out 
and placed in their new location. At first the change was not 
apparently agreeable, as they darted about in a furious manner, 
but some became quiet and were taken out after an immersion 
of about one minute and returned to fresh water; but not to 
the same from whence they had been taken. In the course of 
half an hour or an hour the fungus began to loosen from the 
body in quite large patches, showing that the connection of the 
hyphez, or rootlets, with the skin had been destroyed, and the 
next morning I picked out quite a large number of these dis- 
carded fungus flakes which the fish had thrown off into the 
water during the night. In order to make sure that the hyphe 
‘should be entirely destroyed, and not leave relics from whence 
new crops might be generated, I gave each fish two additional 
baths of the strong salt water, and until they were moved from 
their aquarium and injured at a later period, I found no traces of 
fungus on any of them. It is true that in some’ of the cases 
experimented upon, the salt water did not cure the fish, but the 
salt water certainly killed the fungus, and undoubtedly if the 
fishes had not been very much debilitated before the bath was 
given them, their lives might have been prolonged as in the case 
of some of the others. The black bass which was experimented 
with, was literally loaded with a fluffy plating of fungus when 
