66 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



The past summer the stationary engine that was in the State fish car Adirondack 

 was removed and sent to the Cold Spring Hatchery for use in pumping salt or fresh 

 water during the hatching season of the tomcod and smelt ; and with the addition of a 

 number of McDonald hatching jars, I feel confident that this hatchery is prepared to 

 meet all the demands which we may make upon it. The men employed are experts 

 in handling the salt water fishes as well as the fresh. 



At this station we also collect and hatch the lobster eggs. The experimental 

 period of lobster hatching is past. The question is now, how many can we turn out, 

 or hatch, and how can we increase the numbers year by year ? The past season over 

 three million baby lobsters were liberated, which is a larger number than has been 

 planted during the whole previous work of the hatchery. 



I would call attention to the trifling expense attached to this work. The collecting, 

 hatching and liberating of over three million lobsters, which the Commission planted 

 last summer, cost considerable less than $250, and the total expense for the collection, 

 hatching and planting of the thirty-two million tomcods, forty-one million smelt and 

 three million lobsters, actually cost less than $700. Of course, if the men that were 

 employed in this work had had nothing else to do, the expense would have been 

 greater, but at the same time they were engaged collecting, hatching and rearing 

 brook trout, brown trout, rainbow trout and salmon. 



For fear that someone might attempt to make comparisons between the cost of 

 collecting and hatching tomcod, smelt and lobster, and the collecting and hatching of 

 whitefish, ciscoes, pike-perch, mascalonge and the different trout hatched and reared by 

 the State, I would say that the eggs taken from the tomcod, smelt and lobster are very 

 easily secured, and that each fish produces immense quantities. It is not uncommon 

 to take fifty thousand eggs from a female tomcod weighing seven or eight ounces. 

 There are 288,000 eggs in a quart. The tomcods are captured in small fyke nets that 

 are set in the Cold Spring harbor, near the docks or piers, and only a short distance 

 from the hatchery. 



Smelt run up the brooks or creeks to spawn during the month of March. The 

 small, cheap, inexpensive net used captures them by the hundreds. They are very 

 prolific ; the eggs are the smallest of any hatched by the State. There are twenty 

 eggs to a lineal inch, and a quart contains nearly one-half a million. They hatch in 

 about thirty days in a temperature of about forty-two. If the temperature is slightly 

 above that point, the hatching period shortens. 



Lobster eggs are collected from the fishermen, who, for a small sum, or in many 

 cases without any charge, hold all spawning lobsters alive until our men can go and 

 secure the eggs. The men visit these fishermen once in every day or two. The eggs 

 that they secure are simply so many eggs saved, as these lobsters would be sent to 



