BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 419 



After rebuilding, as first described, on October 9, 1S77, though late in 

 the season, I commenced restocking the pond with trout from Roaring 

 Brook, Kellam's Creek, and Spring Brook. This was their spawning 

 season that year and many of the males were decked in gorgeous 

 colors. I put in the pond between 200 and 300 trout, and during that 

 fall and winter put in also 000 other fish, small fry as well as some of 

 larger pretension, viz, shiners, horned chubs, white chubs, striped and 

 speckled dace, suckers, one perch, one sunfish, and several other vari- 

 eties that I never heard named ; and then my real success with a self- 

 sustaining trout pond commenced. It is called now Glen Mere. After 

 stocking this time, I commenced feeding entirely with angle-worms, 

 which I readily procured of the boys and even girls and some women, 

 at five cents per quart; not only feeding for the time being, but laying 

 away in dirt, in boxes in the cellar, for winter use. I, conceiving this 

 to be the best artificial fish-food for most kinds of fish, commenced pre- 

 paring a plat of ground on the side of the pond for its culture. Where 

 the ground is uniformly moist and made mellow and rich these worms 

 can be produced in immense quantities, but I have never needed any 

 of this kind of food after the first winter. The next spring the trout- 

 food fish produced such immense numbers of young fish that after the 

 food natural to such waters was exhausted the trout had nothiug to do 

 but turn their attention to their less royal brethren. 



Most of these small fish are vegetarian, either from necessity or 

 choice, and when they have cleared the waters of the frog spawn, &c, 

 1 feed them on boiled wheat-bran, made thick and molded into loaves. 

 They will, in my pond, when other food is scarce, devour four loaves in 

 five days as large as common bread pans will hold heaped up. Many 

 of these fish escape the trout, and grow to be fiue table-fish, for which 

 purpose we use many of them. The trout are always fine and in good 

 condition without any care as to food, and as wild as any brook trout that 

 I ever saw. They and the suckers now hatch their own young in the 

 canals above described, and the other fish in the gravelly banks along 

 the shores of the main waters. The perch and sunfish that 1 put in 

 with the small fish grew finely ; the former grew in two years from about 

 three inches long to about ten inches, and he was a fine old bachelor 

 fish to eat ; the latter became, in one year, about four times larger than 

 when put in. The perch as well as the trout is carnivorous, and it is 

 a question in my mind whether it would or would not excel the trout 

 for domestic fish culture or whether there are other kinds which will 

 excel either. Catfish are largely vegetable eaters in their food, and 

 with my present experience I think I might have done better with them 

 by correct feeding. 



Suckers extract their food from the mud in the pond, but what that 

 food is I never could learn ; have feared it might in part be on other 

 fish eggs, and they should be excluded ; but in such waters as mine 

 (entirely spring water) they make a very good breakfast when well pre- 

 pared for the table. 



