Conservation Commission. 191 



month of May he collected fifty-four additional individuals for 

 observation at Linlithgo. 



In 1908, employees of the Pennsylvania Fisheries Commission 

 noted that the short-nosed sturgeon in the Delaware river reached 

 the spawning age at a very much earlier period and when of a 

 much smaller size than was usually supposed. A number of these 

 sturgeon were captured and placed in one of the larger ponds at 

 the Torresdale hatchery. They were about equally divided as to 

 sex. The majority produced either ripe eggs or milt, but neither 

 sex ripened at the same time as the other. In the spring of 1909, 

 a large pond was stocked with small short-nosed sturgeon rang- 

 ing from a foot and a half to three feet in length. There were 

 about five males to one female. Two females ripened at the 

 same time as four males, and the eggs were taken. The eggs of 

 the first female were not all ripe, and very few of the eggs were 

 hatched. A second lot of eggs was treated differently and a good 

 proportion of them were incubated. The result of the work con- 

 ducted at Torresdale in 1909 indicated that they are not suit- 

 able for hatching by the jar method. The eggs are so heavy and 

 glutinous that, in the first place, the jars had to be set one at 

 every trough in order to furnish a sufficient force of water to 

 move the eggs, and secondly, on account of their heaviness, those 

 which fungused would not rise to the top of the jar, making 

 screening almost impossible. It was believed by the Superin- 

 tendent that much better results could be obtained by hatching 

 the eggs on lake trout trays. 



The sturgeon cannot be kept over the winter in shallow ponds. 



The short-nosed sturgeon at Linlithgo (Station were caught in 

 the Hudson river in the spring of 1911. On May 15th, there were 

 fifty-seven in a pond, among them a number of gravid females. 

 When the pond was drawn down in the fall it was discovered that 

 the fish had spawned; but no fry were found. A few bass had 

 accidentally got into the pond, and it is believed that they 

 destroyed all the young fish. 



The only loss of sturgeon was one fish which jumped into the 

 outlet and remained so long out of water that it could not be 

 revived. 



