290 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



ing season you will find a large number of nests of small bass, 

 the bass being ten or eleven inches long, which I have always con- 

 cluded were three years old. Hence, from the above facts, you will 

 perceive that the bass of our western country are valuable, and, at the 

 same time, can be easier transferred, and in greater quantities, from 

 one stream to another, than almost any other fish. All that is neces- 

 sary to suppl}'" a pond with any quantit}^ would be to examine their 

 nests at the time they are spawning, and to pick up the small gravel 

 out of their nests, with the eggs attached thereto, and put them in a 

 bucket of water, and place them in your pond, in such a position that 

 smaller fish could not devour the eggs ; and in a short time they would 

 hatch, and the young ones would help themselves. Or, to secure a 

 larger (juantity in a short time, wait until the young are hatched, and 

 are in innumerable (juantities, suspended over the nest; then, with a 



.(piece of gauze net, dip them up and empty them in a vessel containing 

 as much pure water as will sustain them until you can convey them to 

 your pond ; and then, as I before observed, they can support them- 

 selves, while young, on insects, &c. Or, early in April or May, if you 

 are fond of angling, you can go to a stream in which there are plenty, 



vand in catching fifteen or twenty, will almost always get nearly one 

 half the number smaller ones. Put these into your pond unhurt; and, 

 as they have not spawned that season, they will soon stock the water. 

 Then all that remains to be done is to supply 3'Our pond with other 

 small fish, minnows, &c., for food for tlie large bass, and they will in- 

 crease in quantity just in proportion to their supply of food. Hence I 

 am satisfied that if a farmer would convert one acre of his land into a 

 pond, well supplied v^^ith fresh water, that acre would raise and support 

 more fish yearly (the value of w^hich would be more,) than any other 

 two acres cultivated in any other manner — the expense of cultivating 

 deducted from each. 



Mr. William Shriver, a gentleman of this place, and son of the late 

 David Shriver, esq., of Cumberland, Maryland, thinking the Potomac 

 •river admirably suited to the cultivation of the bass, has commenced 

 (he laudable undertaking of stocking that river with them; he has al- 

 ready taken, this last season, some twenty or more in a live box. in the 

 water tank on the locomotive, and placed them in the canal basin at 

 Cumberland, where we are in hopes they will expand and do well, and 

 be a nucleus from which the stock will soon spread. 



