278 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



fry there have been so many successes that it made it more difficult to convince the 

 satisfied fish-culturist that the system was wrong and a failure, in that it did not 

 accomplish what might be accomplished by rearing the fry to a year or more of age 

 before they were turned into wild waters. The U. S. Fish Commission was the first 

 in this country to recognize the fact that the system of planting helpless fish fry was 

 wrong, and quite naturally was the first to set on foot experiments to discover the 

 remedy. 



Under date of December 4, 1S89, Mr. Charles G. Atkins, superintendent of the 

 salmon-hatching stations of the U. S. Fish Commission in Maine, reported to the Com- 

 missioner the details of his method of rearing the larvae of certain flies as food for 

 young salmonkhe, at the Craig Brook station of the U. S. Fish Commission. This 

 report has not been printed in any of the Fish Commission publications, but an abstract 

 from it was printed in Shooting and Fishing, December 26, 1889. I believe that Mr. 

 Atkins is the only fish-culturist in the United States who has cultivated the larva' of 

 insects on a large scale for the purpose of feeding young fish. In England, Mr. Thomas 

 Andrews, of Guildford, a noted pisciculturist, has cultivated insects and Crustacea 

 in breeding boxes and in ponds, as food for trout fry, and I quote from a letter he 

 wrote me last year : 



My experience has taught me that one yearling fish is worth a hundred or a thousand fry for 

 stocking purposes. * * * I get fewer fish perhaps (by feeding natural food), but I get monsters of 



6, 7, 8, and 9 inches in a year, and my yearlings fetch three times the price of some other piscicul- 

 turists. 



The system of Messrs. Lugrin and du Eoveray, in France, of self-reproducing food 

 for young fish, has been practiced in Gremaz since 1884, and is too well known to need 

 more than passing mention, as it is not unlike the method pursued by Andrews, and 

 it has been adopted by Muntadas in Spain, and is printed in detail in the Bulletin 

 of the U. S. Fish Commission for 1887, and is copied into the proceedings of the 

 American Fisheries Society for 1892. I do not pretend to mention all of the fish- 

 culturists at home or abroad who practice this rearing of natural food for young 

 fish, and what 1 have said has been said briefly, only that I might introduce a new 

 experimenter in this particular field. 



Early in the current year I wrote an article for the distinguished German fish- 

 culturist, Max von dem Borne, upon the " results of artificial fish-culture in the United 

 States," and this being translated and printed in an Austrian newspaper, was read 

 by Carl Edler von Scheidliu, au Austrian engineer, who wrote me a letter, from which 

 I make this extract : 



The first and most important question to be solved in the artificial culture of all fish is as to the 

 proper food for them with reference to their kind, stage of growth, and the purpose they are to serve. 

 This question, so long unsolved by all nations, I, by following further on in the line of the Frenchman, 

 Lugriii; have solved, and have tested the solution as good, cheap, and practically feasible. 



Mr. Von Scheidliu proposed to make over to me for use in the United States his 

 method of rearing natural fish food, which is called "The Scheidliu-Rakus method of 

 fish breeding and feeding," and I entered into correspondence with him to this end. 1 

 have already received several long papers on the subject, but the correspondence has 

 not reached that stage where it would be proper to enter into the details of the 

 system, but when all the papers promised arc received I shall turn them over to the 

 U. S. Fish Commission, and if tliey prove to be what I now believe they will, the system 





