THE MENHADEN FISHERY. 351 
“Q. Now, aboutice. We know a great deal has been done in the way of preserving bait in ice. 
How far has that got?—A. It is a very crude and clumsy contrivance. They generally break up 
the ice into pieces about the size of pebble stones, or larger; then simply stratify the bait or fish 
with this ice, layer and layer ‘about, until you fill up a certain depth or distance. The result is that 
if the bait can be kept two weeks in that method it is doing very well. They generally get a period’ 
of preservability of two weeks. The ice is continually melting and continually saturating the bait 
or fish with water, and a very slow process of decomposition or disorganization goes on until the 
fish becomes musty, flabby, and tasteless, unfit for the food of man or beast. 
“Q. Well, there isa newer method of preservation, is there not?—A. There is a better method 
than using ice. The method described by the Noank witness, by using what is equivalent to snow, 
allows the water to run off or to be sucked up as by asponge. The mass being porous prevents the 
fish from becoming musty. But the coming methods of preserving bait are what is called the dry- 
air process and the hard-freezing process. In the dry-air process you have your ice in large solid 
cakes in the upper part of the refrigerator and your substance to be preserved in the bottom. By 
a particular mode of adjusting the connection between the upper chamber and the lower there is a 
constant circulation of air, by means of which all the moisture of the air is continually being con- 
densed on the ice, leaving that which envelopes the bait or fish perfectly dry. Fish or any other 
animal substance will keep almost indefinitely in perfectly dry air about 40° or 45°, which can be 
attained very readily by means of this dry-air apparatus. I had an instance of that in the case of 
a refrigerator filled with peaches, grapes, salmon, a leg of mutton, and some beefsteaks, with a 
great variety of other substances. At the end of four months in midsummer, in the Agricultural 
Building, these were in a perfectly sound and prepossessing condition. No one would have hesi- 
tated one moment to eat the beefsteaks, and one might be very glad of the chance at times to have 
it cooked. This refrigerator has been used between San Francisco and New York, and between 
Chicago and New York, where the trip has occupied a week or ten days, and they are now used 
on a very large scale, tons upon tons of grapes and pears being sent from San Francisco by this 
means, I had a cargo of fish-eggs brought from California to Chicago in a perfect condition. An- 
other method is the hard-frozen process. You use a freezing mixture of salt and ice powdered 
fine, this mixture producing a temperature of twenty degrees above zero, which can be kept up 
just as long as occasion requires by keeping up the supply of ice and salt. 
“Q. How big is the refrigerator ?—A. There is no limit to the size that may be used. They 
are made of enormous size for the purpose of preserving salmon, and in New York they keep all 
kinds of fish. I have been in and seen a cord of codfish, a cord of salmon, a cord of Spanish 
mackerel, and other fish piled up just like cord-wood, dry, hard, and firm, and retaining its quali- 
ties for an indefinite time. 
“Q. Well, can fish or animals be kept for an unlimited period if frozen in that way 7—A. You 
may keep fish or animals hard-dried frozen for a thousand years or ten thousand years perfectly 
well, and be assured there will be no change. 
“Q. Have geologists or paleontologists satisfied themselves of that by actual cases of the pres- 
ervation of animal substances for a long period 7—A. Yes; we have perfectly satisfactory evidence 
of that. About fifty years ago the carcass of a mammeth, frozen, was washed out from the gravel 
of the river Lena, I think, one of the rivers of Siberia, and was in such perfect preservation that 
the flesh was served as food for the dogs of the natives for over six months. Mr. Adams, a St. 
Petersburg merchant, came along on a trading expedition, and found it nearly consumed, and 
bought what was left of it for the St. Petersburg Academy of Scienee—the skeleton and some por- 
tion of the flesh—which were preserved first in salt and afterwards in alcohol. Well, we know the 
