FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 295 



March 10th and continued till April 3d, and ninety-eight strings, containing nearly- 

 one million eggs, were deposited. 



" The eggs are hatched in the automatic shad jar, provided with a cap of fine- 

 meshed wire netting; the usual inflow tube is retained, but the siphon tube is with- 

 drawn, the water escaping over the top of the jar. The amount of water circulation is 

 not great enough to force the mass of eggs to the upper side of the jar, or to give 

 much motion to them. They are lighter than shad or whitefish eggs, and when put 

 in rapid motion to dislodge adhering sediment they would clog the outlet tube if the 

 ordinary method of manipulating this jar were employed. 



"The eggs from several fish may be placed in one jar. They perhaps need as 

 little care as any eggs handled by fish culturists. When one string of eggs or one 

 lobe of a string dies it may be removed with a small net, or the entire contents of the 

 jar may be turned into a pan. 



"The period of hatching varies irom two to four weeks, according to the temper- 

 ature. As the fry hatch, they pass over into tanks provided with screened overflows, 

 where they are held till planted. The fry are very hardy, and may be readily retained 

 in aquaria for several weeks. The percentage of eggs hatched is very large. From 

 one lot of 955,000, 754,000 fry, or seventy-nine per cent., were produced." 



Tt)e Tomcod. 



The tomcod or frostfish is a toothsome little fish, and adds materially to the food 

 supply, as it may be caught from almost every dock and pier-head of Greater New 

 York. The State in some years hatches over forty million of little tomcods. They 

 spawn in December and average twenty-five thousand eggs to a fish, though one fish 

 of one pound weight furnished 43,740 eggs. With the water at forty degrees Fahren- 

 heit, the eggs hatch in thirty-five days, and it requires four days to absorb the sac 

 with which they are born. 



Tl>e Aad^erel. 



The common mackerel, so-called, that it may be distinguished from the Spanish 

 mackerel and related genera, seems, like the codfish, to be one of the fishes indispen- 

 sable to that portion of the human family who are fish eaters. It is a comparatively 

 small fish, averaging about twelve inches in length and three quarters to one pound in 

 weight; but fish weighing from three to four pounds are occasionally taken. The 

 mackerel has been propagated artificially, more successfully by the dry process as 

 practiced with brook trout and other eggs, than by the wet process. The fish average 

 about forty thousand eggs, but 546,000 eggs have been taken from a mackerel of one 



