News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1915-09-29
BETTY AT THE FAIR
Letters of the Panama Pacific Expo.
sition by Florence Livingston

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL, Sept. 16, 1915
Concluded from last week.
Now, father, want to tell you thu
most curious thing which I have so fal
discovered in this building. 1t has to dt
with fish, but from it have been obliged
to draw a conclusion which entirely up
sets one of my fundamental notions
That notion was that all living organ
isms are intended to be perfect and thai
they are perfect except when wrong liv'
ing and perversion have interfered. This
theory was dealt staggering blow by
the Bureau of Fisheries. I was asked
here to contemplate lobster with de.
formed claws, many full-grown fish with
stunted upper jaw or deficient lower jaw,
to say nothing of thousands and thous.
ands of baby fish so imperfect that their
life breath flickered out after few days.
| No other one thing has given me great
er pause. Perhaps in week or two
shall have recognized my ideas and shall
have provided myself with comfortable
theory which will cover these facts, but
| just now am overwhelmed by the top
ping of one of my firmest beliefs. No
one has ever suggested to me that salmon
deviate in the slightest particular from
| normal living. [ have never heard that
they are nervous or dissipated or over
taxed; understand that they keep early
hours and regular years, and that they
maintain. the strictest routine; and yet
here are an astounding number of them
ffected with distressing malformation
or cut off by hopeless abnormality.
Out of every Matching of trout or sal
mon, there are several imperfect speci-
mems. Usually they are double. The
tiny fish is only skeleton at first, hay
ing left his vital organs in the egg, which
is still attached and which gives him
nourishment. Frequently two fish pop
out of the egg and have only one set of
vital organs between them, and of course
they cannot come to maturity. But how
are We to interpret the natural scheme
of things which allows such possibilities?
1t takes the salmon four years to grow
up. He spends his infancy in fresh wa
ter and sails down stream to the sea to
mature and flash himself in salt water.
The amazing, inexplicable thing is that
after the four years, the salmon go back
to spawn in fresh water haunts of their
early days. Will you kindly tell me how
this instinct is managed? Am l to un-
derstand that fish are wiser in their ba-
byhood than creatures of supposedly
higher gifts? How is it possible for the
full-grown salmon to go back instinc-
lively to the spot he left III an early stage
of his existence?
Salmon eggs are most beautiful pink
--or perhaps 1 should say salmon pink,
since they probably gave rise to the term.
They are translucent and fascinatingly
attractive, like the flower buds of some
strange tropical tree. Each female pro-
duces about 5000, and in single hatch
cry in Alaska more than 100 900, 900 fish
have been obtained in year. Under
artificial propagation, more than 80 per
cent come to maturity, but under nat
ural conditions more than 80 per cent are
destroyed by enemies and unfavorable
surroundings. Unlike the Atlantic sal.
mon those of the Pacific die after spawn
ing.
The eggs do not begin to hatch until
after 120 days, and at the Exposition the
small fish, which are exhibited in open
runways, do not develop very rapidly.
am told that this is because they exer-
else too much. Visitors are constantly
dashing up and making exciting gestures,
while the poor little fish, frightened by
these violent motions, which seem direc
ed toward them, dart this way and that
in an instructive effort to get out of dan
ger, and their baby bodies are not quiet
long enough to accumulate the fat which
is their due.
We saw great many interesting fish,
which came from the Puget Sound re-
gion. The wolf eel is long, peculiar
creature with a grotesquely expressive
head; the geoduck looks like an enoT-
nous parsnip attached to pair of clam
shells; the skate presents his three-cor-
nered body in many different attitudes;
the devil fish holds up his redundant
arms that one may count the adhesive
discs which outline them.
Then we took up an entirely different
phase of the Fisheries department. This
was concerned with sponges. What are
sponges, father9 OF course you will say
with me that they are sea organisms, for
commercial purposes, deprived of vital
elements and reduced to mere skeletons.
Very true, but that is only tiny part of |
a long story.
The first phase is the gathering of the |
sponges. which have grown under nat
ural conditions. The best sponges cone
from the Mediterranean, but very good |
ones are found off the west coast of Flor |
ida. They are usually collected by a ves-
sci which sends out from two to six |
boats. Except in shallow water, each
boat carries two men; one to manage the
boat, the other equipped with a glass;
bottomed bucket and three-pronge ed /