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i8 INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, 1876. variations were so slight as, in many’cases, to be hardly noticeable. In Spanish machine-made nets, the two exhibits were excellent. The American exhibit of nets was wonderfully complete, and showed apparatus intended for the capture of every kind of fish found on our coast. The general tendency to use cotton for nets seems to imply its superiority over all other material. The great ingenuity displayed in nets and seines of American planning, apart from the excellence of the material, was quite conspicuous. In fact, nets of American manufacture, made especially for European use, are now in demand abroad. In the apparatus used by sportsmen, the American exhibit was excellent. It is to be regretted that no opportunity was allowed to compare them with those of English make. The variety of reels of American make, of simple and compound construction, devised for trout-, salmon-, or for sea-fishing, was a feature of the Exhibition. In the Japanese exhibits of fishing-implements, the excellence and neat ness displayed in their various apparatus were quite remarkable. For preserving their nets and lines the dried juice of the persimmon is used by the Japanese. In the Chinese exhibits of Class 647, peculi arly constructed fish-traps, which worked automatically with the fall ing and rising of the tides, were conspicuous. In apparatus serving for dredging oysters, and for lifting such dredges, the American exhibits were of the most serviceable character. The general con clusion to be derived from a close comparison between the fishing- apparatus used by fishermen in other countries and by American fishermen, is quite favorable to the latter. Nets made of ramie fibre, coming from Liberia, were apparently of great strength and flexibility. CLASS 648.—Fish-Culture—Aquaria, Hatching-Pools, Vessels for Transporting Roe and Spawn, and other Apparatus used in Fish-Breeding, Culture, or Preservation. The entire list of exhibits belonging to Class 648 came from the United States, and represented all the varieties of apparatus used in fish-culture, either for the hatching of the eggs or for the transporta tion of the young fish. American fish-culturists having first resolved the problem of subjecting the spawn of fish to long land transits, the apparatus used in transporting the ova of the California salmon from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast was on exhibition. Such receptacles for the transportation of fish were simple in character, the principles of aerating being carried out either by hand or by readily understood mechanical arrangements. In hatching-apparatus, as for salmon, no very great improvements have been made over those in use in 1875- In shad-hatching, the method employed by the Fish Commissioners