172 DOMESTICATED TROUT. 



be trusted in a trout pond proper. The pond, hovv- 

 ver, must be covered, and the fish must still be pro- 

 tected from rats, minks, snakes, and especially herons 

 and kingfishers, which will destroy great quantities of 

 them, if allowed to. 



4. Take good care of the fish. Now, having bred 

 from a healthy stock, and having developed strong, 

 healthy embryos, and having provided a suitable place 

 for the young fry, only one thing more is required for 

 success, and that is to take good care of them. 



If you take good care of trout, I think there are 

 ninety chances in a hundred that you will raise them. 

 I know that there is a good deal of scepticism (I beg 

 the reader to excuse the digression which follows) 

 about the practicability of keeping young fry alive 

 through the first six months of feeding, and I am 

 aware that some of the best authorities say that a con- 

 siderable percentage will die unavoidably during that 

 time. Mr. Stephen H. Ainsworth, in a letter to the 

 writer, once said that a considerable percentage of the 

 eggs when impregnated were premature, and conse^ 

 qtiently produced an imperfectly developed fish which 

 could not live. Theodore Lyman, in the Report of the 

 Massachusetts Committee of Fisheries, 1870, says: 

 " All remained remarkably healthy till May, when a 

 certain number were observed to be weakly. It is 

 likely 'that they were naturally sickly, and, when the 

 yolk sac was gone, they had not enough vitality to 

 feed."* And Seth Green speaks in his book on trout 

 culture as if there were necessarily a great mortality 

 * Massachusetts Fisheries, Report, 1870, p. 33. 



