No. 3. The inclosure in use for the confinement of the stock of
breeding fish for the four years from 1872 to 1875, inclusive, was made
by running a barrier across a narrow arm of a small lake (mentioned in
official reports as "Spofford's Pond") near Bucksport village. This
body of water, about 60 acres in area in the summer, receives the
drainage of not more than 5 square miles of territory through several
small brooks, that are reduced to dry beds by an ordinary drought.
About a quarter of the shores are marshy and the rest stony. The water
is highly colored by peaty matters in solution, and all objects are
invisible at a depth of 2 feet: The bottom is composed mostly of a fine
brown peaty mud of unknown depth. Aquatic vegetation of the genera,
_Nuphar_, _Nymphaea_, _Bragenia_, _Potamogeton_, &c., is abundant. The
water is nowhere more than 16 feet deep in the spring, and 11 feet in
midsummer. The portion inclosed is 2 feet shoaler.

The inclosure occupied sometimes 8 or 10 acres, and sometimes less. The
barrier was from 400 to 600 feet long, and was formed the first year of
brush; the second and third years of stake-nets, weighted down at the
bottom with chains; and the fourth year of wooden racks, 4 feet wide
and long enough to reach the bottom, which were pushed down side by
side. The brush was unsatisfactory. There were holes in it by which the
fish escaped. A single net would not retain its strength through a
whole season, the bottom rotting away and letting the fish out, unless
before the autumn was far advanced its position were reversed, the
stronger part that had been above water being placed now at the bottom.
This method was therefore rather expensive and not perfectly secure.
The wooden racks were costly and heavy to handle, but quite secure.

The salmon placed in this inclosure had to be carted in tanks of water