Adhesive Eggs. 21 1 



Once the smelt was placed in the family Salmonidce 

 because it had the small adipose second dorsal fin. 

 It has been removed from that family, but keeps on 

 just the same in being one of the most delicate things 

 that can be fried for breakfast. It grows to a foot in 

 length in Maine; but one of five inches suits me best, 

 as I can eat it head, fins, tail, bones and all, and it is 

 better than the big ones. Jordan gives its range as 

 "Nova Scotia to Virginia, sometimes land-locked." 

 They live in the fresh waters of Lake Champlain, 

 where they are called "ice-fish," as they take them 

 through the ice in February and March. They are 

 also found in other lakes. 



The New York State hatchery at Cold Spring Har- 

 bor is immediately below a mill-dam, although it gets 

 no water from the mill pond. From the overflow to 

 salt water is a shallow stream about 20 feet wide and 

 some 500 feet long. The stream had no fish in it ex- 

 cept the mummychogs and an occasional trout that 

 escaped from the hatchery ponds. I resolved to try 

 srnelts, and for three years sent men down to a river 

 on the south side of Long Island — we were on the 

 north, on the Sound- — and bought several hundred 

 smelts in the spawning season, took their eggs and 

 stocked this nameless stream. After the third year 

 we got enough spawning fish without buying them 

 and stocked waters on Staten Island and in other 

 places. We turned out many millions each year. Mr. 

 George Ricardo, at Hackensack, N. J., had begun 

 smelt hatching before I did, and had met with success 

 by spawning the fish on grass-lined perforated boxes 

 placed in the river, letting the young go free. 



Smelt eggs are adhesive, as has been said, but are 

 not glutinous. In nature it spawns in swift water, at 



