JUNE 2, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
877 

but as it hit the edge of the mountain cap some 
peculiar suction of the wind caused it to tip 
downward and literally flow in a stupendious fall 
into the valley. The sun illumined the fall and 
changed it into silver, and I looked at a cloud 
Niagara, silvery molten metal, flowing, pouring 
in soundless billow into the heart of Santa Cruz. 
Work in a State Fish Hatchery. 
_ “A pus1ic office is a public snap” and “a public 
job is a gorgeous snap for the favored few” ‘has 
been uttered so often by satirical people and been 
printed in newspapers so frequently that the mass 
of citizens have come to look upon them as 
axioms. But there are persons who, having been 
behind the scenes or who hold offices, have 
learned that while there may be occasional snaps 
in public office holding, most employes in State 
Departments, at least, earn their salaries. Every 
one in the Department of Fisheries of Pennsyl- 
vania, for instance, labors as few people labor in 
their private business. 
_ It is a fact that there is only about one person 
in a hundred who can stand the toil and long 
hours which are necessary in the fishcultural es- 
tablishments of Pennsylvania. Not long ago a 
gentleman who was desirous of having his son 
learn the businéss of raising fish, visited one of 
the hatcheries and a few days later remarked that 
he could not understand how anyone could be 
induced to work for the Department. As a mat- 
ter of fact, no one will work in a hatchery unless 
he loves the business. 
It is safe to say that out of the 365 days in the 
year, every man in the State hatcheries works 
350, unless it happens that he is sick, which is 
seldom. There is little difference between Sun- 
days and holidays and regular working days, with 
the exception of during the months of August 
and September. This continuous unremitting 
labor is not the will of a human task master but 
the result of absolute necessity. Fish are like 
small children, requiring ceaseless attention, and 
fish eggs during the period of incubation, with the 
single exception of the brook trout, cannot be 
left a quarter of an hour without being watched 
and attended to, From the moment the fish 
spawn to the time the little fish are delivered to 
applicants there is little sleep and rest for the 
employes of a hatchery. I have known a super- 
intendent and his leading assistants to be fuk 
days without having time to remove their cloth- 
ing or go to bed, and at the best had not more 
than four hours sleep out of the twenty-four for 
a period extending sometimes more than six 
weeks. Even double the regular force of em- 
ployes could not materially lessen the arduous 
unremitting toil. Of course, this is only the case 
during the season for fishes which yield -vast 
quantities of eggs and within two or three weeks 
in which the eggs hatch. The fry must be planted 
within a few days after having emerged from the 
eggs. ; 
At the Wayne hatchery, for example, over 
100,000,000 pickerel and yellow perch eggs were 
collected, hatched and delivered to applicants 
within twenty days, and nearly 50,000,000 more 
eggs were gathered and sent to other hatcheries 
to be incubated. In this work two and some- 
times three men drove daily to one or more of 
the mountain lakes in the neighborhood and gath- 
ered the eggs, bringing them to the station at 
night, sometimes not arriving until 10 o'clock. 
But here is the story worded as graphically as 
I can: 
On April 18 a telegram arrived at my office in 
Harrisburg stating that the ice was off the lakes 
and the pickerel might ‘be expected to spawn any 
day. The appointed spawn-takers arrived at the 
hatchery on the 2oth, and the first inspection of 
the ponds commenced the following day in the 
midst of a furious snow storm which covered the 
ground to a depth of over eight inches. For three 
or four days there were no signs of eggs; then 
suddenly the superintendent. received a dispatch 
from one of the lakes stating: “Immense quan- 
tity of eggs found. Messenger will bring a car- 
load to the hatchery to-morrow.” 
The message was delivered just as another 
messenger was departing with ninety cans of trout 
. for applicants and fifty more were being got 
ready for another shipment. The pickerel eggs 
reached the hatchery at 8 o’clock that evening 
and the entire available force was immediately 
set to work filling the jars in the hatchery. At ° 
1 o’clock in the morning the work was completed 
but there was no bed or rest for the weary men. 
The water flow had to be adjusted so that the 
eggs would work properly and not overflow, and 
it was daylight before everything was safe and 
then the tired men, after eating a hurried break- 
fast, had to fill cans with trout for another ship- 
ment to applicants, and make ready for another 
consignment of pickerel eggs. 
About noon they arrived, and’ while these were 
being placed in the jarsa telegram came from an- 
other spawn-taker, stating that his messenger 
was bringing 140 quarts 2by train and _ that 
he himself was bringing as many more _ by 
wagon. By this time the superintendent and his 
men felt that they had about as much work as 
they could attend to, but more was to come. 
At 11 o'clock that night the last batch arrived, 
and by 3 o’clock in the morning every jar in the 
battery was filled and there were a large number 
of eggs still unprovided for. A dispatch was 
sent to another hatchery announcing a messenger 
on his way with the eggs to that station. By 
this time there were seven men at work for periods 
ranging from seventeen to twenty hours daily, 
and a stenographer telegraphed for to the central 
office in Harrisburg. 
In the evening when the night men took charge 
of the eggs, the superintendent, with his eyes in- 
flamed with weariness, went to his desk and made 
out his list of shipments to be made, and wrote 
anywhere from 60 to 100 notices of shipment to 
applicants, never completing his task before 12 to 
1 o'clock in the morning, and, as he had to be out 
and about by 4 at the latest, he simply threw him- 
self on the lounge, dressed as he was, and snatch 
what sleep he could. 
Ten days. after the eggs were placed in the bat- 
tery the little fish began to hatch and the daily 
shipments rose to from 50 to 100 cans to from 
75 to 150 cans a day, and the messengers on the 
road did not have time to reach home but were 
compelled to receive their fish at some points dis- 
tant and’carry them to the applicants. Three of 
the messengers did not have their clothes off for 
five days. 
All hands had the joyful knowledge that before 
the pickerel hatching and shipping would be quite 
completed, the yellow perch work would begin 
and that it would be fully as exciting and exact- 
ing as the other. Employment in public offices 
may be a gorgeous snap in some branches of 
public service, but it would be a difficult matter - 
to convince the assistants and superintendent and 
the employes generally of the fish hatcheries of 
Pennsylvania that it is true. After all the work 
the men have to do, it is very gratifying to the 
superintendent when a lot of fish has been de- 
livered, to have the applicant telegraph back: 
“There was no fish in the water in the cans re- 
ceived. What is the meaning of it?’ It is ex- 
pensive as well, because it renders it necessary 
for the superintendent to telegraph back: “Well, 
plant the water, have faith, and see the fish grow.” 
W. E. MEEHAN, 
Pennsylvania Fish Commissioner. 
Massachusetts Trout. 
- PLAINFIELD, Mass., May 21.—Three newspaper 
men were on the Mill Stream to-day, Charles 
Hallock, Collins N. Glee, of the Hampshire 
Gazette of Northampton, and Harry V. Radford, 
the bright young editor of Woods and Waters. 
Results showed that this famous old trout brook 
still holds its own, barring what it annually yields 
to the anglers who visit it in force, and has 
yielded for more than a century. Radford led, 
both as to count and size of fish. Besides the . 
attraction of the fishing Mr. Radford found and 
collected a goodly lot of biographical material for 
future use relating to the poet Bryant, Charles 
Dudley Warner, Rev. Moses Hallock, Marcus 
Whitman, the Sandwich Island . missionaries, 
Richards and Rouse, and other Plainfield cele- 
brities. Mr. Hallock had invited him to be his 
guest. 
Nesting of the Loggerhead Turtle. 
[Read before the Linnean Society of New York by Mrs. 
F. E. B. Latham.]. 
On the beach the turtles commence to lay 
about the middle of May, and the latest date at 
which I have observed them was the full moon 
of September. A full moon night is generally se- 
lected for a hunt, as at that time the tide is 
higher and the turtles seem instinctively to know 
that the waves will help them on their journey to 
a nesting place. Closely watching the water, we 
often fancy we see a black object nearing the 
shore. If the sea be rough we know none will 
land, for they seem to fear being caught by a 
breaker and thrown on their back, when they 
would be totally helpless. At last our patience 
is rewarded; creeping up out of the waves, the 
turtle stops and looks around; should anything 
now alarm her she quickly slips back into the sea; 
but if the coast is clear she laboriously mounts 
the sandy beach in a direct line. When near the 
barrier she commences to dig. First one hindfoot 
removes some sand, then slightly shifting her 
body sideways, the other is used, until a hole 
from twelve to twenty inches deep and from four- 
teen to eighteen inches in diameter is formed, She 
now deposits her eggs, covering them loosely with 
sand, the whole operation taking from thirty to 
forty minutes, 
During this time the turtle completely ignores 
our presence; her large bulging eyes seem to have 
lost all fear in her anxiety to accomplish her ma- 
ternal work; indeed so intent is she upon her 
task that one may take the eggs in his hands as 
she drons them, or may catch them in a bag or 
pail, curious as the statement may seem, and the 
turtle, apparently unaware of her loss, will pro- 
ceed to fill in the cavity, even after every egg has 
been removed. Having scraped the sand back | 
into the hole, heaping it higher over the nest 
than the surrounding beach, she seems in a hurry 
to return to her native element. In returning 
they seldom take the same crawl, but ascending 
and descending trails generally resemble a con- 
tracted letter V 
In the earlier part of the season the turtles 
seem to feel a desire to nest before the eggs are 
developed enough to be deposited. I assume this 
for the reason that I have often found false nests. 
that is, where excavations have been made and no 
eggs deposited. As we have no neighbors nearer 
than eight miles the nests could not have been 
tampered with. I also have found crawls where 
the turtles had dug from three to five holes on 
their upward journey, and finally placed their 
eggs in a nest close under the barrier. 
I have taken great pains to dissect and examine 
the turtles killed since our residence here, and 
from evidence furnished by such dissection, | 
have come to the conclusion that these turtles lay 
several nests of eggs in a season, We have per- 
mitted the turtle to deposit her eggs in a nest, 
cover, and leave them; then, on her return to 
the ocean, “turned” her and taken her home. 
From one such specimen we took 300 matured 
eggs, end from the nest she had previously made 
we took 140. I also counted 800 immature eggs, 
yolks, and there was also a mass of yolks I did 
not try to count. Comparing the length of empty 
egg-sac with that which was filled with matured 
eggs, I conciuded that the turtle had already laid 
one nest of eggs previous to the one at the time 
of capture. 
Our last tutrle, captured in July, I also exam- 
ined, and the length of empty egg-sac compared 
with previous examinations led me to the conclu- 
sion that the turtle had already laid three nests 
of eggs, as she contained only 140 matured eggs, 
and there were no indications of any more eggs 
coming to maturity this season. This turtle was 
very fat; from the green fat I made two and a 
half gallons of fine oil, and I could have saved 
more had I cared to do so. The contents of its 
stomach were composed of sea weed and a few 
bits of barnacle shells; there was also a quantity 
of parasitic worms, quite slender in shape and 
about two inches long. A still larger mass of 
these was found in the throat. 
Having determined to watch the process from 
laying to hatching, I began to hunt for new nests 
and to number them, knowing that the bears 
