368 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
in thickness, made with a dead-air space and three 1-inch layers of hair felt, the joints of the doors 
being padded. No air enters the car when closed, and there is no provision for circulation of air 
within the cooling chamber. Each car carries about 6,000 pounds of crushed ice mixed with about 
600 pounds of fine rock salt, which is entered at the top and tapped down in the cans, after which 
the covers are put on and the roof holes closed. In eight or ten hours the receiving room of the car 
has become chilled, when additional ice and salt is added and the car is ready for the freight. 
The longest transportation of fresh fish in this country is the sending of salmon 
from Columbia Eiver to the Atlantic coast, requiring five or six days. The methods 
are thus described by Messrs. Seufert Bros. Co., of The Dalles, Oregon: 
We ship all our fresh salmon by express for New York and all points east in boxes 41 inches long, 
20 inches wide, and 12 inches deep. We put in each box 175 pounds of fish undressed, or just as they 
leave the water, and 75 pounds of crushed ice in each box. The express company refills these boxes 
daily at certain icing stations along the line, and makes no extra charge on these icings, that being all 
included in the express charge of 81 cents per pound on the net weight of the fish to Chicago, or lO.J 
cents to New York, or 7^ cents to the river or Union depot. Council Bluffs or St. Paul, Minn. In 
shipping carload lots we put 150 pounds in each box, fill the box with ice, and load 12 tons of fish 
in a car. We use about 8 tons of ice, and these cars are not opened or re-iced until they reach New 
York, by passenger train service to Chicago and fast freight from Chicago to New York over Erie 
Railway, on Wells Fargo express trains, 30 hours’ time. These cars reach New York in 5^ days from 
this river. 
The sbipmeut of fresh salmon in carload lots across the continent began in 1884, 
during which year eight carloads of fresh salmon were sent east, all arriving in good 
condition. On account of the high rate for freight service in refrigerator cars the 
profits were so small that farther shipments were postponed until a reduction in rates 
was made in 1890. 
FREEZING FISH IN THE OPEN AIR. 
In cold countries the freezing of fish in the open air during cold weather is a 
natural and doubtless one of the oldest forms of preservation. In the northern por- 
tions of Europe and America fish are frequently preserved in this manner. Prior to 
the use of ice in the United States it was not unusual during the winter and early 
spring for dealers to take fish frozen by natural cold from Boston or New York 200 or 
300 miles inland. But the uncertainty of depending on continued cold weather, and 
the advent of the use of ice and quick transportation, have resulted in an abandonment 
of that trade. 
There is yet a, very extensive trade in frozen smelt during the winter, especially 
in December and January. These fish are frozen in Maine and the British Provinces, 
boxed and shipped by steamer or rail to Boston or New York, whence they are supplied 
to the retail trade. During the season of 1897, 82,300 boxes, each holding an average 
of 25 ijounds of smelt, were received in Boston. Most of these come from the British 
Provinces, being adfnitted free of duty, and they are sold from 2 to 8 cents per pound, 
averaging perhaps 4 cents per pound, wholesale. 
FROZEN-HERRING INDUSTRY. 
The most important industry depending on open-air refrigeration is the freezing 
of herring on the Newfoundland and New Brunswick coasts for the United States 
markets. This is scarcely more complicated than the usual method of packing in 
crushed ice, and not by any means so intricate as the process of mechanical or chemical 
refrigeration now employed in the large marketing centers of the United States. It 
