16 SCIENCE SKETCHES. 
a great knife dexterously cuts off the head, the tail, 
and the fins; then with a sudden thrust he removes 
the intestines and the eggs. The body goes into a 
tank of water; and the head is dropped into a box 
on a flat-boat, and goes’ down the river to be 
made into salmon oil. Next, the body is brought 
to another table; and Quong Sang, with a machine 
like a feed-cutter, cuts it into pieces each just as 
long as a one-pound can. Then Ah Sam, with a 
butcher-knife, cuts these pieces into strips just as 
wide as the can. Next Wan Lee, the ‘China boy,” 
brings down a hundred cans from the loft where the 
tinners are making them, and into each can puts a 
spoonful of salt. It takes just six salmon to fill a 
hundred cans. Then twenty Chinamen put the 
pieces of meat into the cans, fitting in little strips 
to make them exactly full. Ten more solder up 
the cans, and ten more put the cans into boiling 
water till the meat is thoroughly cooked, and five . 
more punch a little hole in the head of each can to 
let out the air. Then they solder them up again, 
and little girls paste on them bright-colored labels 
showing merry little cupids riding the happy salmon 
up to the cannery door, with Mount Tacoma and 
Cape Disappointment in the background; and a 
legend underneath says that this is “ Booth’s,” or 
“ Badollet’s Best,” or “ Hume's,” or “ Clark’s,” or 
“ Kinney’s Superfine Salt Water Salmon.” Then 
the cans are placed in cases, forty-eight in a case, 
and five hundred thousand cases are put up every 
year. Great ships come to Astoria, and are loaded 
with them; and they carry them away to London 
and San Francisco and Liverpool and New York 
