FOOD. 



they would bite to pieces and consume a lump of the nat- 

 urally turned bonny clabber. When the fish are three or 

 four months old it may be made fine enough by stirring 

 with a spoon, and if there are a few large lumps they will 

 not go to waste, as the fish will pull them to pieces. Curd 

 is best for the larger fish, as it is more compact, and holds 

 together in lumps. The bonny clabber may be given to 

 the fish until they are a year old, but after that it is gen- 

 erally more economical to feed them upon liver or fish. A 

 change of food is good for fish, as well as for all other ani- 

 mals. But as this whole question is yet unsettled, or more 

 properly the art yet in its infancy, we give only our practice. 



A feeding platform in the ponds may be used with ad- 

 vantage. This is simply a platform of boards, two feet by 

 four, placed in the middle of the pond, and raised a few 

 inches above the bottom ; it will also sene incidentally as 

 a cover for the .young fish. If you throw the food over 

 this platform, all, if not taken before it reaches the bottoni, 

 will fall upon the platform, and as this can more easily be 

 cleaned than the bottom of the pond, there is less liability 

 of fouling the water ; the fish will also take food better 

 from a clean bottom than when the food lodges in the mud 

 or weeds. 



There will be a great difierence in the growth of the 

 fish noticeable after the first few weeks of their existence. 

 8ome, of course, will be larger and more vigorous than 

 others from their birth ; but of those apparently of the same 

 size and health when one month old, some at six months 

 will be four times the size of others ; this, too, when grown 

 in the same pond and under the same circumstances. They 

 will begin to eat each other when very young. A Trout 

 only a few weeks old begins to show^ sj^mptoms of fight, 

 and will kill his weaker brethren when they get in his way 

 by biting a piece out of their tails. In two or three 

 months, when some of them get to be double the size of 



