404 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



in. Another serious objection is the manner in which the 

 water escapes from the hatching apparatus, but of this I will 

 speak hereafter. The next method is Major T. B. Ferguson's 

 glass jars, the water coming in at the bottom. These are a 

 decided improvement on the grille ; they are cleaner, and the 

 envelopes that come off the eggs can easily be taken out ; but 

 they all lack one most important feature — viz. the permitting of 

 the water to flow out freely without injuring the fry or allowing 

 any of them to escape. 



In the Ferguson jars, as soon as the fish are hatched they 

 commence to swim about, instead of rising and falling with the 

 water. To prevent them from escaping altogether, and so 

 being lost, the water is allowed to run through a cylindrical- 

 shaped vessel made of fine wire gauze ; when this gets crowded 

 with fish it has to be emptied back again into the glass jar, or 

 else the fry would smother each other, as they often do, even 

 when well attended to. In the grille system the manner in 

 which the water escapes is through a piece of fine wire gauze, 

 placed across the end of the hatching-box. The wire is fixed 

 perpendicularly with the bottom of the box ; this causes the 

 water to pass through the screen at right angles, with a con- 

 siderable pressure on the screen ; all weak fish getting drawn 

 against this screen are killed, being unable to get away. 



To prevent all this, I have invented my present hatching- 

 box, which is as nearly as possible automatic. It is on the 

 system of a boiling spring. The large-sized hatching boxes are 

 twelve feet long by two feet six broad ; on the bottom (inside) 

 four half-inch pipes are placed, stopped at one end. The water 

 is turned on, and holes are pricked in the pipes about two 

 inches apart. When the box commences to fill, it has the 

 appearance of boiling, the water being all in commotion. Three 

 inches above the pipes trays are fixed, made of perforated zinc 

 or wire gauze ; these are three and a half inches deep by two 

 feet long and one foot broad. The water is raised until it is two 

 and a half inches deep in the trays, and it then runs out of the 

 sides and ends of these trays by a channel that runs down each 



