308 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
For Forest and Stream. 
HARK-AWAY. 
H ARK away! speed the day, 
For the wildwood is waiting, 
Fresh leaves and sweet blossoms the sunlight doth gleam, 
While the sentinel pines 
Pass the word down the lines 
To summon the veterans of Forest and Stream. 
Hark away! crystal spray, 
Trout are leaping and flashing; ' 
Whispering hemlocks breathe perfume at morning’s first beam, 
Mark the smoke, curling blue, 
At the old rendezvous, 
Where the blazed path is leading to Forest and Stream. 
Hark away! hounds at bay, 
When the late leaves have ripened; 
See, the trusty guide’s oar in the sunlight doth gleam, 
And the rifle s sharp crack 
At the wood’s bivouac, 
Wakens answering echoes o’er Forest and Stream. 
T. W. A. 
This Journal is the Official Organ of the Fish CJultur- 
ists’ Association. 
PRACTICAL FISH CULTERE. 
< 
NTJMRER SIX. 
THE HATCHING TROUGHS. 
T HERE have been few or no experiments made to test 
different kinds of wood in order to ascertain which, 
if any, would keep the cleanest under water and give out 
the least amount of deleterious sap, but all have used pine, 
which will if new often exude a jelly-like substance whose 
tenacity is such that a sheet several feet long and weighing 
many pounds can often he lifted hy one end without break¬ 
ing. This is not slime, nor fungus but inspissated sap 
which gives the water a flavor of turpentine that can be 
tasted. Fish hatched in such a trough nearly all die before 
the absorption of the sac, from the disease known as blue 
swelling or “dropsy.” Cedar is said to he had, according 
to Mr. Ainsworth’s observation of trout-fry in a cedar pail, 
yet a cedar swamp is the place where a good trout stream 
is often found, and many good spawning grounds have old 
cedar logs around and above them in all stages of decay. 
The first attempt to obviate this difficulty was the use of 
panes of glass on the bottom, and strips of it on the sides 
of the trough, but from the impossibility of making per¬ 
fectly tight joints it did not work well, the water was 
flavored with pine, and there was dead matter under the 
glass which perhaps bred disease, and last hut not least of 
the objections, the fry would wedge their heads in the 
cracks and die there hy the hundreds; so tight would they 
he wedged between the strips hy the instinct to hide, and 
the growth made afterwards, that it was practically impos¬ 
sible to either dislodge them while alive or remove them 
after death. 
Mr. Stone tried charring the wood, and thought highly 
enough of it to patent it. I have one charred trough, but 
have "others that I like better that are not patented. The 
objections to the charcoal are these; the wood must be 
charred deeply to be of any use, and this leaves it rough 
and full of seams making it difficult to fit screens in or 
level strips on the bottom, besides it continually dirties 
your clothes. 
Mr. Palmer has zinc troughs which I believe are not 
patented and are probably good if not too expensive; or a 
trough might be made of sheet iron covered with asphalt 
varnish. The writer has always held a theory that hem¬ 
lock was the right wood, hut never tried to test it hut once, 
and then it was not a fair trial, for the trough was charred 
before it was used. Troughs have been coated with arti¬ 
ficial slate which seems also good if the swelling of the 
wood does not crack it; in fact anything _ that, will keep 
the water from contact with wood and will give off no 
deleterious matter, will be found to work well. I have 
used the distilled coal tar called pitch, such as is used for 
roofing; it requires to he put on hot, and as it is thick it is 
difficult to get it so even that a soreen frame will fit any¬ 
where. It will also sometimes flake off, as it was suggested 
that the plastic slate might. Spawn were hatched on the 
hare pitch, and reared on it to see if it was injurious m any 
manner, which it was not. 
The best thing I have used is tar from the gas works, 
thinned with spirits of turpentine and applied with a paint 
brush; this if thin is absorbed hy the wood, makes no coat¬ 
ing, and therefore does not interfere with the working of 
dams or screens; it should he renewed every season. This 
is not patented, and I do not know who first used it; I 
learned it from Monroe Green who uses it on everything 
that the water comes in contact with. 
The troughs can he made of any length, but for con¬ 
venience in working should he not less than eighteen inches 
wide by six or eight inches high. A fall of one inch in 
five feet will give inclination enough to secure a flow. 
Strips of three fourth inch stuff are placed across the trough 
at intervals of about two feet to break the current, and the 
trough must be accurately leveled crossways in order to 
secure an even flow r in every part; therefore the stups 
should be of uniform thickness throughout. 
Instead of a dam to raise the water after the fish are 
hatched, I put two end pieces in the trough and by means 
of holes and plugs keep the water at any desired height. 
If gravel is used to hatch on, get the dark colored, as the 
eggs show so much better; sift it to get out all coarser than 
an°eighth of au inch, and then sift again to take _ out the 
fine gravel and sand; wash it well and distribute it evenly 
in the trough by “striking” with the edge of a shingle as a 
measure of grain is “struck.” Some are so careful as to 
boil the gravel to kill any insect larva or eggs, and as it 
do’nt hurt the gravel, boil it if you want to, hut I have 
never thought it necessary. The only use of the gravel is 
to hold the eggs in position after being evenly distributed 
and so prevent the current from washing them in heaps, 
thereby smothering the bottom ones, and perhaps allowing 
a circulation under each egg as it is supported by points. 
I prefer gravel smaller than the egg, as there is less danger 
of an occasional egg getting down in a cavity and there 
dying unobserved. White fish eggs are hatched on fine 
sand. This method was very good in its day and will he 
used yet hy some, hut this winter my troughs will be fixed 
for Brackett’s trays and Holton’s box, and gravel banished 
for ever. The objections to gravel are that it is dirty, as 
mentioned above, the eggs get covered, die and generate 
fungus unobserved, fry get under it and die, and sediment 
rots beneath it; take a trough’which after standing a few 
months looks comparatively clean on top and rake up the 
gravel and it will he found all black below with a foul sul¬ 
phury smell. 
The Coste hatching tray, made of galvanised iron with its 
glass grille or gridiron made to hold a thousand eggs, is 
neat but expensive, a nice toy to hatch a few in the house, 
but for business it “do’nt pay,” and as the writer of this 
series is not interested in any patent contrivance, and has not 
even a hatchet to put an edge on, he will give his opinion 
of things as they seem to he good or otherwise, no matter if 
the best friend he has owns the patent. 
The writer well remembers the remark of Mr. Ainsworth 
when lie asked him if his screens were, or would he pat¬ 
ented. He turned sharply on his heel and said, “No sir, I 
detest patent rights.” I saw that a sore spot was touched, 
and dropped the subject, hut have thought much on it since, 
and feel somewhat as he does, with this exception, if a 
man has really expended any amount of brains , and pro¬ 
duced anything actually fi&Uo, and valuable, as Mr. Ainsworth 
did, I see no objection"to his reaping a proper reward for 
it, and the only way in which it can he done is through a 
patent, yet look at the mousetraps. 
I am often asked, “what does-’s patent amount to?” 
and although all the fish culturists in the country who 
hold patents or not, are personal friends, yet there are 
considerations higher than friendship when recommending a 
thing to the public who expect an opinion unbiassed by 
the considerations of friendship, ask “wliat does it amount 
to?” That my friend Slack advocates the trays and makes 
them for sale will not prevent me from recording my opin¬ 
ion that they are expensive toys, only fit for an amateur, 
and that the roller spawning box of my friend Collins 
(which he does not use himself) does not work as smoothly 
as the cuts would seem to indicate. 
I used to suppose that to get a patent, some new principle 
was required, but here we have a charcoal box patented; 
fence posts ha,ve been charred from time immemorial to 
keep them from the fungus and rot, and the rolling screen 
has been used to carry straw on a threshing machine and 
crackers in a bake shop before the inventor was horn. 
We all use each others ideas more or less in this world, 
and the ideas of men who have gone before us, and if each 
little “idea” was hampered with a patent, how we would 
have to devour the phosphorescent fish to make brains 
enough to get around them all. There lias been so much 
of this “mutual admiration” business in our new vocation 
that the public seem to expect more or less of if when we 
write, hut there is getting to be too many of us to keep it up 
long; we will have to get down to the liard-pan of merit 
before long. 
I noticed this particularly at the meeting of our Fish 
Culturists Association in New York last February. When¬ 
ever any prominent man made a statement it was received 
almost without question publicly, but “buzzed” afterward. 
I intend to give- my opinion of anything connected with 
fish culture as far as 1 am able, eutirely unbiased by any 
considerations of friendship, and as they are over my own 
signature, they will only pass for the opinions of an indi¬ 
vidual interested in the advancement of fish culture, who has 
neither friends to reward nor enemies to punish. But to the 
subject; 
The Brackett trays mentioned above are the invention of 
Mr. E. A. Brackett, Commissioner of Fisheries of Mass., 
and are unpatented, I believe. I will use them anyhow and 
if they are patented the patentee may send bill and it will 
he paid, for it is “worth it.” The “trays” are used in an 
ordinary hatching trough and are simply frames the width 
of the trough and about two feet long, with a wire cloth 
bottom of about eight wires to the inch for trout, or just fine 
enough to hold any egg they may be required for; the wire 
is painted with a gas tar and tightly stretched, the frame 
is supported at the corners so that there is a flow of water 
below the egg as well as on top. Other trays can be put 
on top of this to the depth of six or eight, thus increasing 
the capacitv of a trough almost indefinitely. The trays 
can be lifted out, the eggs sprinkled with a watering pot, 
the bad ones nicked out, and if another empty trough is 
placed alongside the first one, they can be put in that, and 
the other scrubbed out and perfect neatness thus secured. 
There will lie sediment from the purest water, and slime 
will form on wood, glass, or stone under it, and Brackett’s 
trays are the best and cleanest thing yet invented to obvi¬ 
ate" it. 
The other invention mentioned as “Holton’s box” was 
originated by the late Marcellus Holton, and is an improve¬ 
ment on the “trays.” It consists of a box eighteen inches 
square and as many deep, with a tin bottom sloping down¬ 
ward from eacli side; a tin supply pipe of three inches diame¬ 
ter runs down the outside and bending under the box enters 
at the middle of the bottom, a cap an inch above sends the 
water evenly on each side.. A frame with two upright 
pieces to raise and lower it, holds the frames or trays 
which are made 17-£ inches so as to work easily. The 
frames are covered with tarred wire of nine wires to the 
inch for whitefisli, or seven for salmon trout; brook trout 
would want about eight. This box will take sixteen 
frames, and as sixty-four whitefisli eggs cover about a 
square inch, each frame will take eighteen thousand 6ggs; 
the box 18x18 will hatch nearly three hundred thousand eggs. 
As the water comes up from the bottom there should be 
an empty frame put on top to keep the top layer down. 
There is a rim around the top to keep the water from flow¬ 
ing all over, and an opening on one side allows it to pass 
off where it can again be conducted in another pipe, and 
so up through another box whose top must lie an inch 
lower. The same water can be made to pass through a 
dozen boxes, and a million eggs batched in the space occu¬ 
pied by an ordinary hatching trough whose capacity is 
only twenty thousand! With one empty one the eggs can 
be looked over , and cleaned every day, and the whole 
thing washed out, thus securing not only cleanliness but 
the greatest compactness possible. 
This was invented for wliitefish, and the one I have seen 
in our Stale Hatching House lias o ly been used for the™ 
but it can be used for trout by altering the inlet. Wi, 1 
fish, when hatched, pass upward through the wires and s 
over the edge of the. box and down stream, where tliev & ° 
caught in a screened box, but trout pass through down 0 
wards and would enter the supply pipe or be killed by th" 
continual boiling and throwing against the sides. 'fC! 
would, therefore, require a fine bottom screen that the? 
could not pass, or to have the bottom beveled the other 
way, that is, deeper on the edges, or have the supply pi DP 
come further up and make the bottom flat so that they 
would not be killed by being piled on top of each other 
They could then be taken out by a cock and pipe in q lp 
bottom. 
The liolfcon box is patented, the patent is owned by Mr 
Holton’s mother, who has left it in the hands of Seth 
Green. These two inventions are really all that amount to 
anything in the way of improvement in hatching trout 
and whitefisli eggs, since the commencement of the Gsh 
restoration movement in America. They secure that, great 
desideratum, neatness and compactness, which the use of 
gravel can never do. 
Nothing weakens an embryo trout more Ilian h e iun¬ 
covered with sediment until it is nearly killed. It often is 
left with strength enough to burst its shell, but not enough 
vitality to live a day after its exertion. 
Fred Mather. 
—--- - 
NOVA SCOTIA INLAND FISHERIES 
Df --♦-- 
W E have been requested by Secretary Fitz Cochran 
of the Nova Scotia “Game and Inland Protection 
Society,” to print the following letter, alluded to editorially 
in our issue of June lltli:— 
To the Editor of the Halifax Morning Chronicle :— 
In your issue of the 22d instant, you rc-publish from the 
New York Forestand Stream, a letter from W. P. 
Whitcher, Esq., Deputy Minister of Marine and Fisheries 
of the Dominion, reflecting upon certain action which the 
“Game and Inland Fishery Protection Society of Nova 
Scotia” have recently taken in regard to the River Fisheries 
of the Province, which requires some answer at my hands; 
and I therefore trust you will give me space for a few com¬ 
ments upon it. 
But, before doing so, let me say that, a short time ago a 
number of gentlemen interested in preserving the moose 
and other game animals of the Province from total destruc¬ 
tion, formed themselves into a society, having that object 
in view, and after many discouragements, and a good deal 
of opposition, they have succeeded in passing through the 
Legislature a law prohibiting the killing of moose for three 
years, and also providing for the more efficient protection 
of game birds. I say that we as a society had to encounter 
many difficulties, and had to overcome not a few sectional 
prejudices, hut it seems that the measure of our cup was 
not yet full; and, just as we were congratulating our¬ 
selves upon our success, we are doomed to the still further 
infliction of the semi-official “snub” contained in the letter 
of the Deputy Minister. It is known to many of your 
readers that, by tlie Confederation Act, the control of our 
river fisheries, "(whether wisely or not, may be considered 
an open question,) was transferred to the Dominion author¬ 
ities, and consequently, although the name of our society 
implies supervision over them, we-can do no more than 
simply advise. In this view, at one of our meetings, we 
passed a resolution, (subsequently embodied in the form of 
a petition to the Minister of Marine and Fisheries,) in 
which after incidentally alluding to the well known ineffi¬ 
ciency of the present protective system as regards the river 
fisheries—we strongly urged upon the Minister the neces¬ 
sity of appointing a Superintendent exclusively for this 
Province, whose residence should he in Halifax. This was 
the main (in fact only) object of our petition, which ap¬ 
pears to have been entirely overlooked by Mi*. Wliitcher, 
who would make it appear that the society had brought 
general charges of inefficiency against his department, with¬ 
out bringing any facts to substantiate them. . 
This I suppose is the meaning of the following offensive 
paragraph in his letter:— 
“Unlike Dr. Richardson’s narrative respecting the’;Mar- 
garee, which relates facts, the resolutions of the Halifax 
Fishery Protection Society, printed m your (F. A b.) last 
issue, ignore such vulgar materials. ,v * 
Were I disposed to recriminate in the same style I might 
do so with effect, as I have abundant material at hand, but 
in the interests of the society I forbear. 
In a letter which I addressed to Mr. Whitcher a few days 
ago, I called his attention to the real object, of our petition, 
and said that if the Department wished specific facts to 
prove what was well known to almost everybody lieie, 
viz., that illegal spearing and netting of salmon had been 
going on for years in this Province, and was still being 
largely practised, and that few, if any, of the ^ll-dams 
were furnished with sufficient fish-ways, they could be fi ¬ 
nished in abundance, and I instanced a case which bad J ■ 
come under my notice, of an officer of the garrison f 
had just returned from Gold River, and informed me < 
he had found that river almost completely obstructed 0} 
nets, set contrary to law. Upon representing the matte to 
the overseer, that functionary replied that it was no m- 
doing anything, as the magistrates would not “ ne “l t 
fenders, and the Superintendent was too far away to back 
him up. The gentleman in question is prepared to si in¬ 
stantiate the facts under affidavit, if the Department des 
it. This is only one of many instances that could be given, 
showing the necessity of the appointment of a ^ 
General Superintendent, whose duty it would betovisi 
the various localities and give his support and countenance 
to his subordinates, many of whom are disposed ito <iou 
duty, but are deterred from doing so from want ol• px P 
encouragement. And here let me remark, that ■ » 
nor the society, desire to bring any charge of. metnc y 
against the Deputy Minister or the principal offl_ 
of his department. Our complaint is against the y ' > 
which, we contend, is entirely inadequate to a t 
lisli the desired object. Mr. Yenning the General x 
spector for the two Provinces—a worthy and e 
officer—resides in New Brunswick, and only c rpi ie 
for a flving visit occasionally to this Province. _ 
Local Inspector, Mr. Rogers, resides in Cumberland, < ^ 
seldom or ever seen in this locality, or anywhere 
this. It stands to reason, then, that under these 
stances, there can be no proper supervision ot _ 
fisheries, and it is small wonder that they are in 
sent deplorable state. 
