PROPAGATION OF SALMON ON THE PACIFIC COAST. 
225 
An imnsual advantage is gained in consequence, viz, ten times as many eggs 
can be batched in the same space and witli the same supply of water as by the old 
methods. 
My report for 1874-75 speaks as follows of these hatching-troughs: 
Too much can not he said in praise of these liatching-trays. With them it is only necessary, in 
picking out the white eggs, to raise the tray a little ways out of the water and gently immerse it 
again. The upward pressure of the water throws the dead eggs to the surface, where they can he 
picked out without even the touch of a feather. With tliese trays the hands are never wet, the trays 
are never changed from their places, the eggs never flow over the top, and the feather becomes 
unnecessary. In addition to these advantages, all sediment accumulating about the eggs can be 
easily run off hy gently moving the tray up and down a few times in the wurter. — (United States Fish 
Commissioner’s Report, 1874-75, page 447.) 
Ill 1876, after a year’s experience with these hatching-troughs, my report alludes 
to them again as follows : 
The hatching apparatus is the same used last year, namely, the Williamson troughs, with the deep 
wire baskets described in last year’s report. I ought to add here that the wire baskets gave the same 
satisfaction that they did the year before. Tliei/ are unquestionably the best thing Inown for maturing 
salmon eggs on a large scale. Of the utmost simplicity in construction, they are more easily handled 
and will hatch more eggs with less cost, lees loss, less room, and less labor than any other hatching 
apparatus in use. — (United States Fish Commissioner’s Report, 1875-76, page 939.) 
For some unaccountable reason this method of hatching the eggs of the Salmon- 
idcc, which is now almost universally in use in the hatcheries of European countries, 
is seldom employed in this country, except on the Pacific Coast. The writer confi- 
dently recommends it, however, as the best method in existence. At the hatching- 
house at Bail'd,^ the trays are 22 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 6 inches deep, the 
trough compartments in which they are placed being just enough longer to enable the 
trays to be raised and lowered, and to be also tilted slightly, without too much friction 
against the partitions and sides of the trough. 
The troughs themselves are all 10 feet long and have a fall of IJ inches to each. 
They are covered with canvas covers made sunlight proof by having been saturated 
with asiihaltum varnish. I need hardly add that the trays and also the interior of 
the troughs are thickly coated with asphaltum. 
The water supply for the first hatching apparatus (1872) was obtained from a 
small brook. After that, until 1890, it was obtained directly from McCloud Eiver by 
a current wheel placed in the river near the hatching-house. Tlie last automatic 
current wheel used was about 100 feet in circumference. 
For the last few years the wheel has been made much smaller and has been used 
to jiroduce power to work a centrifugal immp that pumps the water from the river up 
into the hatching-house. The writer, however, strongly recommends, on account of 
its perfect simplicity, the large wheel formerly used, that lifted the water automatic- 
ally in buckets to the necessary height. In the wheel and pumj) combination there 
are numerous belts and pulleys and minor wheels and other machinery that are con- 
tinually getting out of order, and consequently causing expense of time and mone 3 q 
besides creating various frictions which require continual watching. But with the 
automatic wheel there are no belts, no imlleys, no subsidiary wheels, nothing to wear 
out or get out of order, nothing to watch, and only one thing to cause friction, viz, the 
^ At Sisson station and Battle Creek station of the California Fish Commission the troughs are 
16 or 18 inches wide, which I consider a better width than 12 inches, and would cordially recommend it. 
r. C. B. 1896—15 
