31 -BREEDING NATURAL FOOD ARTIFICIALLY FOR YOUNG FISH 



ARTIFICIALLY HATCHED. 



BY A. NELSON CHENEY, 



Editor of Shooting and Fishing. 



It is an old niaxini that nature's methods are the best methods; also that one 

 can not improve upon nature. This may be true in a degree, but artificial fish-propa- 

 gation, as practiced by modern scientific fish-culturists, refutes these statements in part 

 and proves the fallibility of nature at least in one contest when opposed to the skill 

 and fertile resources of man. When it was demonstrated that nearly 100 per cent of 

 the eggs of fishes of the salmon family could be successfully hatched by artificial 

 means, and that only 2 per cent of salmon eggs deposited in a natural manner were 

 impregnated,* it was an achievement so great, so gratifying, and so productive of good 

 to all the world that, figuratively speaking, the disciples of artificial fish-culture 

 rested from their labors to view the result and listen to the plaudits of the world. 

 This was but natural, fitting, and proper, for it was a grand victory; but when the 

 victors were crowned some were crowned with laurel and some with poppy, from 

 the soporific effects of which they have not yet recovered. 



With the hatching of 90 per cent of salmon and trout eggs there was a return to 

 natural conditions, and the helpless fry were taken from the hatching-troughs and 

 planted in wild waters to take their chances where their ensmies swarmed to prey upon 

 them in their helpless state Admittedly this was a great stride in solving the problem 

 of restocking our exhausted waters, but there were men who were not satisfied with 

 this result and were keen enough to see that other steps were required to make fish- 

 propagation by artificial means a complete success. Something like six years ago the 

 chairman of this Congress said to me : 



We are now seriously contemplating the establishment of a station for the special purpose, of 

 holding salmon ami trout in ponds and feeding them until they are of such size as to be safe from 

 capture by the small predaceons fish which swarm in some waters. I shall read a paper before the 

 Biological Society at its next meeting, pointing out the reasons for our failure heretofore in success- 

 fully stocking waters with the fry of our salmonidae. Failure in such work, barring a few exceptional 

 cases, has been the rule, and will be confessed by those who are honest enough to confess their failures 

 and wise enough to learn from them. 



It requires courage of a superior order to admit of failure in any undertaking, 

 particularly in a matter of this kind, that is a failure only in degree. In planting fish 



* This is not guesswork, but the results of the actual count of the eggs in a salmon river in 

 Canada, the details of which I gave in Forest and Stream, February 18, 1892. 



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