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PART OF THE RACK, OR BARRIER, CLOSE TO THE GATES THROUGH WHICH

THE SALMON PASS.

"fry" that survived out of the brood of four years previous.

The government experts say that there is no longer any danger that the supply of salmon in Alaska will be exhausted, or even seriously diminished. So long as the Bureau is allowed to continue in control, and to prevent destructive methods of fishing, it can maintain the output to the end of time, without curtailing the commercial fishery, and without artificial hatching, except in places where fishing is extraordinarily active, or where the area of spawning grounds is curtailed by such salmon-killing agencies as sawmills, mining industries, etc.

A very painstaking and comprehensive study of the whole subject has been made, and one of the conclusions drawn is that for every salmon which reaches the spawning grounds, from two to five

on the basis of the above figures, that from fifty to eighty per cent. of the total number of salmon may be taken annually without injuring the fishery.

Controlling the matter so absolutely as it now does, the Fisheries Bureau will be able not only to keep as many salmon in the Alaskan rivers as there are now, but to restore the fish in multitudes to many streams which have been depleted by reckless commercial operations the most destructive of these consisting in putting up dams, or stretching nets across the streams, in such a way as to make it impossible for any fish to reach the spawning grounds. Obviously, the adoption of a plan of this kind meant that the river, however productive at the start, would cease to contain any salmon after four or five years.

It seems amazing that any human

being gifted with ordinary intelligence. should adopt so short-sighted a policy. But experience has shown that people generally, when they have a chance to make money rapidly by exploiting a great natural resource, have not the slightest hesitation in destroying it utterly and for all time to come. It has been the practice of the canning companies, when they had wiped out all the salmon in one river, simply to move the scene of their operations to another stream; and, if this had been allowed to go on, the salmon fishery of Alaska, which yields $10,000,000 worth of products per annum, would have ceased to exist within a generation.

Under present circumstances, fortunately, it is not a very difficult matter to repopulate with salmon the depleted rivers. Unlimited numbers of eggs of the finest and most desirable species are easily obtained, and these are already being hatched by the hundreds of millions at two stations which the Fisheries Bureau has established for the purpose. One of these hatcheries is at Yes Bay, in southeast Alaska, and the other is on Afognak Island, south of the Aleutian. Chain. The island is a government preserve, on which no game or fish is allowed to be killed or taken. Natural conditions make it one of the best localities in all Alaska for salmon-culture, and the spawning grounds are so situated as to be at all times under observation and control.

Last season there were hatched at these two stations 96,397,000 salmon eggs, mainly of the redfish, or "sockeye." No special difficulty is involved in the work, although salmon eggs require an extraordinarily long time, eight or nine months, for their incubation.

When the salmon reach their spawning grounds, they pair off, and excavate nests in the bottom by plowing up the sand and gravel with their noses and sweeping it out with their tails, until at length a bowl-shaped hollow is dug, perhaps three feet in diameter and from a foot to a foot and a half deep. In this the female lays her eggs, which are carefully covered up. It then remains for the parents to stand by the nest and fight

are the Dolly Varden and "cutthroat" trout. These trout follow the salmon to the spawning beds for no other purpose than to steal their eggs, of which they devour immense numbers.

While thus defending their nests, the parent salmon become thinner and thinner until at length they die. Not one out of all the multitudes that have reached the spawning beds survives to go back to the sea. Sometimes the streams that flow into headwater lakes are literally choked with their decaying bodies-a pitiful sight to see. Thus, however, it will be understood how and why it is that the maintenance of the supply of fish in any given river depends upon the annual crop of young "fry."

Early in the following spring these can be found on the spawning grounds. by taking up handfuls of gravel from the bottom. They are not yet able to swim, but, when released, wriggle away and burrow into the bottom again, hiding themselves. ing themselves. Meanwhile they derive what sustenance they need from yolksacs attached to their bellies. When they are able to look out for themselves, they pass out of the affluent streams into the lakes, and remain there, feeding, until they are four or five inches long. The call of the sea now summons them, and they wend their way down the river to the ocean, where they dwell in deep water off the coast until, at the end of about four years, they are ready to swim up the river, to spawn, and in their turn to give up their lives for the perpetuation of their species.

During the fishing season of 1909-10 there were taken in Alaskan rivers 34,692,608 salmon, or a total of 175,028,594 pounds. 594 pounds. The annual pack is about 2,500,000 cases of forty-eight one-pound cans each; but the catch varies a good deal from year to year, and every fourth year it is relatively huge. Thus the catch for the season of 1908-9 was 43,304,979 salmon, with a total weight of 213,378,570 pounds.

It is interesting to reflect that during the last ten years Alaska has produced, in salmon alone, fourteen times as much money as Mr. Seward paid for the territory when he bought it from Russia half

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THE ROWELL-POTTER TRAIN STOP-ONE OF THE TWO APPROVED BY THE

GOVERNMENT BOARD.

The illustrations respectively show the signals set for safety, the track trip mechanism, and the signal set for danger.

MECHANICAL BRAINS SAVE LIVES

T

By

ROBERT FRANKLIN

00 many railroad wrecks! 'How shall they be made less frequent?

During the last fiscal year, in this country, no fewer than nine hundred and thirty-two people were killed, and fourteen thousand, three hundred and seven persons maimed or otherwise seriously hurt, by smashups on the rail. It was a frightful carnage. A considerable battle, indeed, might have been fought without greater loss. But there is good reason for supposing that the number of slain and wounded in the present year will be at least as great, and so on for every subsequent twelvemonth.

That is to say, unless something is done to alter radically the conditions which give rise to mishaps of the kind.

It is a very serious problem, and the government is trying hard to find at least a partial solution for it. Congress, not long ago, handed the matter over to the Interstate Commerce Commission, with authority to appoint a board to investigate the whole subject.

This board, in a report newly prepared, declares that the fundamental cause of the trouble is to be found in the American tendency to hurry. People in this country are so anxious to do things quickly that, to a great extent, they ignore caution. Here is the principal reason why railroad wrecks, which are rare occurrences in England and on the continent of Europe, are so frightfully frequent in the United States. Nevertheless, taking conditions as they are, much

sort of mistake may be avoided. They have contrived a number of expedients by which an over-run danger signal gives warning in the cab of the locomotive, automatically. These, which are called "cab signals" are already in use to a considerable extent abroad. Other devices, which not only give warning, but actually stop the train, are still more effective, reducing the human

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may be done to lessen the number of such accidents by the adoption of certain mechanical measures of precautionmost important of all, the automatic train-stop.

Such a stop provides for automatic train control. It is a device to prevent the over-running of stop signals by trainmen. Often it happens that the engineer of a locomotive fails to notice the fact that a signal is set for danger. It warns him to bring his train to a halt; but, failing to recognize it, he runs past, and in many instances a disaster is the consequence.

The ingenuity of inventors has been taxed to devise a means by which this

THE DEVICE FOR CONTACT WITH THE RAIL, CARRIED BENEATH THE LOCOMOTIVE.

factor in the railroad equation to a minimum.

Many such automatic train-stops have been to a greater or less extent perfected. In most instances they are electrical contrivances, and operate by setting the brakes of the train. Thus, for example, one of them-already tried with some

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J. E. PAGE. OF KANSAS CITY, AND HIS PATENT COACH.

This car has an anti-telescoping device, the steel floor at each end terminating at an angle, so that cars

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