APPENDIX IX. 



PERCH HATCHING. 



T THINK that the most wholesome food for very 

 ^ young trout fry will be found to be the still smaller 

 and younger fry of spring-spawning fish, and I venture to 

 predict that the time will come when this natural food will 

 be generally used when practicable. The Yellow Perch 

 (^Perca flavescejis)^ which spawns in April, is an admirable 

 fish for the purpose, as it is very abundant, and its eggs 

 are numerous, easily obtained, and very easy to impreg- 

 nate and hatch. With this end in view, the following notes 

 are given in regard to hatching perch eggs. 



It is the easiest and simplest thing in the world to 

 manipulate perch and take their eggs artificially, and hatch 

 them. I have taken millions in that way, and have hatched 

 hundreds of thousands of them. Indeed, after my first 

 experience, during the year 1868, I found it vastly easier, 

 and had better luck, than with the salmon family. 



It is not only very easy to take perch eggs by hand, 

 but 5^ou can generally impregnate the whole of them, or 

 very nearly the whole of them. If any one would like to 

 see how easy it is, let him take a good-sized milk-nan, 

 nearly full of water, and having found a ripe pair of golden 

 perch, — this is easy enough, I have found hundreds just 

 ripe, — let him impregnate the water well with the milt of 

 the male, and proceed as follows with the female : — 



Hold the fish just over the edge of the pan, so as to let 

 the exterior end of the roe rest, as it comes out, on the 

 further edge of the pan. It will stick in a moment. Then 



