BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 475 



If trout are well fed they begin to spawn when two years old, and it 

 has even happened that trout only one year old have been known to 

 discharge mature spawn. Two-year-old trout lay from two hundred to 

 five hundred eggs, three-year-old ones about a thousand, and those from 

 four to five years old even as many as two thousand. To stock a mod- 

 erately-sized stream with trout requires at least ten thousand young 

 fish per annum. If this has been continued for three years one may, 

 with tolerable certainty, count on good trout-fishing. As a general rule 

 trout flourish better in brooks, where they take care of themselves, than 

 in ponds, where they have to be fed artificially. They need human pro- 

 tection only until they are able to seek their own food. Where there is 

 no running water they can be kept in that which is still, provided that 

 the latter is constantly kept pure by inflowing springs. 



If there are no suitable natural spawning places a spawning and 

 hatching establishment may take their place; and it is well known 

 that during the last decades a great deal has been done in the way of 

 artificial trout-culture. It requires a good deal of technical knowledge 

 to start aud superintend such establishments, but the expenses are very 

 trifling compared with the great profit. Natural trout-culture is much 

 less profitable, because it has been calculated that, left to themselves, 

 one thousand eggs will produce, on an average, only one fish, whilst in 

 a well-conducted piscicultural establishment eight to nine hundred fish 

 may be raised from the same number of eggs. The very waters in which 

 trout flourish most have frequently no suitable spawning places, and if 

 the supply is limited to the result of natural propagation the trout must 

 soon die out, or, at any rate, become very scarce. Young fry from a 

 piscicultural establishment are best placed at first in small streams or 

 brooks with a gravelly bottom and retained there for some time by 

 means of a wire grating. 



As trout find much more food in the brooks and streams above referred 

 to [sluggish, well-shaded waters] than in gravelly mountain streams, 

 and consequently grow faster and acquire a more delicate flavor, a wide 

 and exceedingly profitable field is here opened to the pisciculturist. 

 The prejudice that trout are difficult to raise and that they are very 

 choice in the selection of water cannot be sufficiently combated. As 

 soon as they are able to forage for themselves they will be satisfied with 

 almost any kind of water, provided it contains sufficient food. A brook 

 containing pike and perch, but no spawning places for trout, will have 

 to be stocked with ten times as many young fry, if any good fishing is 

 looked for, as are required for an open mountain stream which is free 

 from those two fish ; but by means of artificial pisciculture the necessary 

 quantity of young fry can easily be procured. 



Mr. Peard, an Englishman, has made very practical suggestions for 

 improving small trout-brooks. As we have seen, trout flourish best in 

 streams which have not only a gentle current of water flowing over 

 even places, but also a considerable number of large, deep, and calm 



