4 DOMESTICATED TROUT. 



that time, in the knowledge required to insure suc- 

 cess, that Mr. Green's reply was hardly an exaggera- 

 tion. Since that time, however, the whole aspect of 

 the matter has been changed, and the care and study 

 bestowed on the subject have evolved a set of rules 

 and principles, the careful observance of which will 

 render a degree of success almost certain. I think it 

 may safely be said that the time has come when trout 

 can be hatched, reared, and brought to maturity in 

 great numbers and with comparatively little loss ; and 

 I think it is also safe to say that success in raising 

 the fish will of necessity be accompanied by pecuniary 

 success while the present relations exist between the 

 prices of trout and the cost of the food on which they 

 are reared. 



primitive state of feeling towards him, which is free from aver- 

 sion ? 



Again, I have at my ponds trout that were hatched from 

 parents that were themselves hatched there artificially. Now, it 

 may have been wholly a fancy, but there has seemed to me to be 

 a difference between these fish and the offspring of wild parents 

 in respect to shyness, and that the artificially hatched progeny 

 of domesticated parents were less shy than the artificially 

 hatched offspring of wild parents. If this is so, and the trout 

 show an improvement in one generation, what may we not ex- 

 pect offish in which domestication has been hereditary for many 

 generations ? 



The time may come when continued domestication, together 

 with the overcoming of their fear of man, will so modify the 

 present action of their instincts, that, when pains are taken with 

 the domesticated tro*it, they will prefer to seek the shelter and 

 food which they find around the homes of men to the precarious 

 chances of a wild and roaming life. This may not be probable, 

 but I do not think it is impossible. 



