The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 20, 1902, Page 5

atching the eggs feeding and cleanliness. Every da we must content troughs are cleaned and the egg basi brief decription b hed free of slime and refuse by care for hatching depen fully manipulated feathers. Twice a year perature. everything is disinfected and painted. ow trout eggs. There is everything to bg learned by ener expe a conscquently the most ac- deg curate ts are kept of temperature, days, each the condition of fish eggs and the days long number lost. All these can be referred days less; the to at\any future date to ascertain causes f failure or succe Afte h are hatched and have be- nough frys to stand an life with their cousir 1 there comes the delicate mat- s the temper T The . g portation. In some cases it journey of three days by rall or not. No they will reach their destination, " e egg, this spot ri the frys must be = p. This is the yapdled wit est care. takes One man is sent with every shipment, nd it is his duty to keep the fish alive d healthy. H fish are swim: in great ca that will hold 0 to 8000 young salmon or from S0 to which aye fecun- 3 trout. Here are his official instruc- s old, the circle of (jone, which will give how has enlarged. & much time the yer has for recreation the unimpres- to tell, by scie fertility from the is £aen be im- 3 ether the ot, and the two are so stage that the naked sk ep the temperature of the water e cans between 40 and 50 degre Take the temperature every thirty utes. Place the ice in the cans carefully. Do not dr it in. In moderately warm weather six to elght pounds of ice to the will hold the temperature for an Aerate the water in the cans by it herd together live off their es pointed up of from twer , the tempera f the trough ar or bright stuff, se their name of ified by the title on they must on sweet curds r big free food hatchery and in busy f eggs at one end ready for the while down the line alevins in every stage of work at this t very t be lest some The danger of dis P s threefold: F s that may have been car- the eggs with the slime and »dy of the parent fish second, mi- in the water d third, mal- accidents, such worry there is the con- be given o THE SUNDAY CALL. HATCHERY AT sS/530/ e wN TER TTING TIOUT i~ i A/’Vlr B e ;’; A ON A T e e ‘ o EIOHT FOOND “RAINBOW " READY 70 BE “STRIPPED raising it in a dipper to the height of two feet; then pour it back into the can. Do thig five or six times for each can every seven to ten minutes, unless the cans are in a wagon which is in motion. Do not fill the cans with fresh water, except from a pure spring or stream. When in motion examine each can every half hour and take temperature and aerate.”” Arriving at their destination the follow- ing instructions must 'be observed: “Before liberating the fish remove at least half the water from the can and re- fill it with water from the stream. Re- peat this until you have the water in the can the same temperature as the water in which you are to plant the fish. “Plant the in shallow running ater. Avold pool ; At present, besides the hatchery at Sis- son in Siskiyou County, the State has hatcheries on Eel River in Mendocino County, called the Price Creek hatchery; at Lake Tahoe in Placer County, where the great Mykiss or lake trout are raised at the rate of 4,000,000 per year; at Tallac in F) Dorado County, and at Wawona 1n Mariposa County. On Shovel Creek 'n Siskiyou County and on the McCloud in Shasta County have been established what are called ‘eying” stations, where the fish are caught and brought up to the twenty-five-day stage before mentioned, or when the organs and circulation have been established, when they are shipped to the large hatcheries, where the prop- agation is completed. At Hornbrook station on the Cotton- weod Creek, a branch of the Klamath River, is an egg collecting station that ylelded 450,000 eggs last year. The work of eapturing and stripping the fish at this auxillary station is most interesting and is fully shown in the illustrations. Cottonwood Creek is especially good for the purpose of getting fine brood stock, fer the largest rainbow trout in Califor- nia run up it from the Klamath looking for spawning ground. The method there, naturally on a smaller scale, is the same as tbat employed at the great salmon catching and spawning stations of Baird and Battle Creek. A rack has been put across the creek so that it acts practically as a fence, allow- ing the water to flow through with a slight raise and corresponding. fall, but preventing the fish from getting up stream. The spawning trout come to this barrier and make wild efforts to scale it. They try every place, and finally at one corner they find what seems to them a weak place and through they go. In- stead of an opening to the open waters above they soon discover they have forced themselves through, the springy pickets of a V-shaped trap that will let them in, but whose sharp points keep them from getting out again; and there they are penned up in a veritable corral, TAKING LIE TROUT o with no chance for liberation until the man comes with his dip net to put them in the “live boxes.”” The “live boxes™ are merely crates with padlocked lids, which are partially submerged in the river to keep the fish comfortably alive until they are just ripe for stripping. 3 This year the run promises even better than last, and Mr. Sothern, the deputy in charge, is kept busy netting out fish. It is a sight to make an angler’s heart jump to see the great five and eight -pound Rainbows come struggling up in the dip nét and go splashing into the big water can that carries them to their water- logged jail. They are perfect beauties! When the live boxes are well filled with ripe fish of both sexes Mr, Shebley goes up from Sisson to help his assistant in the stripping process. The pictures illus- trate them hard at work with the fish on the bank,of the stream. In go the eggs ifto a little pan, then-the milt, and then the two are stirred with a feather for proper fertilization, while the fish are thrown back into the river to tell their comrades of the most remarkable spawn- ing experience they have ever known. At the salmon stripping stations the fish are given away to all who ask for them, as there I8 no use in returning them to their native element, for death is only a matter of a short time after the spawn- ing period, as before explained. The farmers come for miles around to get almon—so if you want fish » quantity and free as air look out for the next Government cat With the trout a different matter, for their lives are not governed witk: such embarrassing pre- cision. After the Rainbows have been stripped 1 washed at the Cottonwood River sta- tion the eggs are placed in one”of the 1 to the Sis- ¢ hatched and little trout wherever called for. Even the eggs in this te must be conscientiously cared > making the sixty-mile train run to land them at Sisson. Every v minutes the cans must be aerated os in the rules mentioned in shipping fish. The Sisson hatchery is the largest in the State and nine ponds have been estab- lished there with the object of ultimately having a fine trout brood farm. At pres- ent the lome brood stock amounts to about 7000 fish of different varieties. Many of the trout are now large enough to strip and are doing their best to help stock the waters of California hese fish are fed on a mixture of mush and pulverized beef livers, the mush be- ing made of boiled shorts and flour. Twice a aay they receive their rations, and in the pond where the large ones are Kkept it is a sight worth seeing to watch the great fellows tearing through the clear water to get their share—and the other fellow's, too, if they can. They are all as fat as stall-fed cattle and look in the pink of cendition; from actual resuits it has been demonstrated that the young fish from the eggs of the home brood stock are superfor to those propagated from the captured fish, and therefore the farm will be regularly enlarged so that eventually it may be possible to supply the demand for small fish .entirely from a chotce stock of special ‘breeders.. Thera is a marked difference between the eggs of these fish and the captured spawn. Those from the wild fish are red, while the eggs from the Sigson farm show almeost clear e. The reason for this is explained by the presence of a small shellfish en- joyed by the trout of the rivers that is not on the menu card of the Sisson aris- tocrats. This brood farm affords a splendid op- portunity for the close study and habits of the different breeds. During the spawn- ing season the .males are all cross and pugnacious and will fight for hours, tear, ing off fins and pieces of flesh. The fing grow out again, just as your finger nafl would, and the mutilations gradually disappear, so a trout fight i3 not generally serious. r The fish hatcheries are doing a greut work for California—much greater than is generally realized. They are stocking the waters of the State with free food for all where there soon would be nothing but barrenness were nature not. assisted. The commission does not plant fish in private waters, but will honor any proper application for fish to be distributed in a public stream. Of course millions of fish are planted each year where in the judg- ment of the Commissioners they will do the mest good, but any citizen has the right to apply for fish for stocking the public waters of his vicinity that he may ultimately epjoy .the benefits accrumg therefrom. Many do not know this and are possibly bewailing their fate that down by the willow tree on the creels running through the old farm they can uo longer catch the numbers and weights of years ago. All they have to do is to ad- dress the California Fish Commission, Mills building, San Franciseo, and ask them for an application blank. This blank will ask many pertinent questions, such as: “Variety of fish .wanted?”” “To be distributed where?” “Tributary to?" “Flowing through what countles?’ “Are these waters pubtic or private?” “Is there ary sawdust or other substances deleteri= ous to fish emptied’ into the waters? “Give size of stream or lake,” and so on for a list of twenty questions necessaiy to give the Commissioners an exact un- derstanding of the merits and possibilities of the application. Thousands upon thou- sands of fish are distributed each year to such applicants, as it all helps to get our public streams and waters well stocked with one of the most delicate and nour- ishing foods known to man. UNHEALTHY CITY OF MADRID. in every way the most unhealthy capital in Europe is enjoyed by Madrid. According to statistics pub- lished by the municipality, there have been 374 deaths during the past five years among a population only slightly exceeding half a million. In 191 the deaths numbered 17,242, and of these 4064 were of children under four years old. This gives a rate of about thirty-three per thousand. In the five years period consumption carried off nearly 10,000 in- habitants and smallpox and measles 5000 more. The municipclity s just beginning to realize the bearing of these figures, and variots decrees have been published for the better enforcement of sanitation. Among other things, it is to be a punish- able offense to let an apartment or dwe! ing before. it has been disiifected by the municipal laboratory department. But two of the greatest evils in Madrid are food adulteration, which is virtually un- checked, and overcrowding. The 525,000 inhabitants are herded in 17,000 houses, which gives an average of thirty-one per- ) ~~ma mar bouse, Tm unenviable distinction of being