GROWING THE LARGE TROUT. 225 



Winter days sharpen their appetites. In either case, if 

 you do not anticipate the cravings of their instincts 

 with your food, the smaller trout will pay the penalty 

 of their lives. It makes no difference with the large 

 ones whether they can wholly swallow those they 

 kill or not. They seize them by the middle, whirl 

 them round as herons do, and swallow them head 

 down. If they cannot swallow the whole fish at first, 

 they will begin digesting the end that is down, and 

 swallow the rest as it comes along. 



I will also suggest the following precaution here, 

 though it is a little out of place. If you have two 

 ponds on the same brook, one below the other, with 

 large fish in one and small fish in the other, make it 

 doubly sure that none of the large ones can by any 

 possibility escape into the pond of smaller ones. Do 

 not be satisfied with leaving things so that you ihink 

 this cannot happen, but make it impossible by any 

 mishap short of an earthquake, for the possible conse- 

 quences cannot be exaggerated ; and what makes it all 

 the worse is that, should a large trout get among the 

 small ones, and adopt cannibal habits, he would keep 

 himself completely hidden, — such is the habit of can- 

 nibal fish, — and you might not discover him till his 

 ravages had been very disastrous. Fix your ponds, 

 therefore, so that no freshet, or clogging up of the 

 screens, or other contingency, can make it possible for 

 the large ones to jump over, creep under, or in any 

 other way get into the pond of small ones. 



6. Nci^er let the water get foul. The source of foul- 

 ness in the water, whenever it occurs, is, of course, the 

 10* o 



