7 6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



meat cutter having holes one thirty-second of an inch at first, the 

 holes increasing in size as the fish can take larger particles. This 

 is mixed with sufficient water, and little by little scattered along 

 the troughs from a wooden spatula, taking care not to feed so 

 much at once that it will not be eaten. With twenty troughs one 

 man should feed all day, getting back to the first one in half an 

 hour, for, like all small animals, the trout want but little at a 

 time, but want it often. For this reason I never advise a novice 

 who receives fish from the State to pen them up and feed them ; 

 they would surely be starved, for if the. young are not fed a 

 dozen times a day they will show it by a shrunken body which 

 appears to be all head. A trout at two to three months old should 

 be larger around the abdomen than about the head, and there 

 should be no pinched look behind the gills. If you can not give 

 the babies this care, turn them into the stream or lake, and let 

 them find their food and face their enemies, and you will have 

 more and better fish. To take trout eggs and hatch them is not 

 difficult, but the best trout breeder is the one who brings the 

 greatest percentage of what he has hatched to be thrifty fish at 

 six months old. 



For the yearling trout the liver may be cut in pieces from a 

 quarter to half an inch, and they should be fed all they can 

 eat at least twice a day. Larger fish will take more and larger 

 pieces, and will get along if fed once each day, preferably in the 

 evening, but they do not suffer if neglected for a day as the 

 babies do, and we find the same rule all through animal life in 

 mammals and birds, with which most people are more familiar 

 the young require frequent feeding. 



Too much importance can not be attached to the feeding of 

 the fry in the early days of their taking food. It is the critical 

 time, not only of their lives, but of their future development. 

 No amount of feeding can make a thrifty fish of one which has 

 been stunted by scant food in its first few months of life, and right 

 here is where intelligent care turns the scale between profit and 

 loss. 



During the quarter of a century in which I have been engaged 

 in this work, and have had to trust the care of the fish to em- 

 ployees because my own time was fully occupied with other work,, 

 the man most valued was he who took best care of the babies and 

 fed them as though he loved them, and not in the spirit of one 

 who did it as a task. 



If one wishes to raise trout on artificial food he must bend to 

 the task as he would if he were to raise any other stock in quan- 

 tities in confined quarters ; but he can arrange natural spawning 

 races, and either take the eggs by hand or let them be laid by the 

 fish, and be satisfied with a much less number of fish hatched,. 



