ural pond with but 7 feet of water, of average
purity, some in a shallow inclosure in a brook, and some turned loose
in a natural lake of some 60 acres area, with muddy bottom and
peat-colored water. In each case the salmon passed the summer with few
losses, arrived at the breeding season in perfect health, and yielded
at the proper time their normal amount of healthy spawn and milt,
though the great sacrifice of breeding fish by the early experiments of
the season reduced the crop of eggs to the small number of 72,000.

The conditions of success were thus sufficiently indicated, and in 1872
the same parties, joined with the United States Commission of
Fisheries, renewed operations on a larger scale, locating their
headquarters at the village of Bucksport, confining the breeding salmon
in Spofford's Pond (Salmon Pond on the general map of Penobscot
station), and establishing their hatchery on the brook formed by its
overflow. This is the lake of 60 acres in which, as mentioned above, a
few salmon had been successfully confined the year before.

Though not at all such water as would be chosen by a salmon at large,
it nevertheless proved well adapted to the purpose of an inclosure for
the breeding fish. It was shallow, its greatest depth, at the season of
highest water, being but 10 feet; at its upper end it abuts against an
extensive swamp, and almost its entire bottom, except close to the
shore, is composed of a deposit of soft, brown, peaty mud of unknown
depth. The water is strongly colored with peaty solutions, has a muddy
flavor, and under the rays of a summer sun becomes warmed to 70