1896.] on Fish Culture. 47 



or five times daily. The feeding requires a great deal of skill and 

 experience, and it is thus no light matter. It would take a man the 

 whole of his time to look after a series of ponds like this, and to 

 attend duly to the fish in them, without doing anything else. 



This is another series of fry ponds on a piece of level ground 

 (Fig. 6). There we have them rather on a hillside, with a good fall 

 from one to the other, and we find the benefit of that in growing the 

 little fish. Some do very much better than they do when the water 

 has not much fall. The ponds are very much of the same description 

 as the others. We have here at each end a screen to prevent the 

 little fish getting out, and the water flows in at one end and out at 

 another, and then on to the next pond, and so on. 



Then the little fish in due time grow to the size which we call 

 yearlings. They are not really a year old, but it seems to be the 

 best name to give them for distinction, and as they are yearlings when 

 they are really a year old and some time after, it seems quite fair to 

 call them yearlings before they have actually lived twelve months. 

 The time that they pass from the fry stage to the yearling stage may 

 be said to be the time during the summer months, when the weather 

 is too warm and the temperature too high to send them very long 

 journeys for stocking rivers and lakes. As soon as the cold weather 

 comes, at the end of August or September, then the fish can travel by. 

 rail and otherwise, and they rejoice in the name of yearlings. 



The scene here represents the preparation of the yearling fish for 

 a journey (Fig. 7). They cannot be taken out of the pond and sent 

 away at once. We had great losses some years ago in doing this. 

 The fish were put into the carrying tanks and sent off, and we had 

 to make elaborate arrangements for changing the water during transit, 

 which has been found since to be one of the very worst things that 

 can be done, and now we never change the water except as a very 

 last resource, in case of some unlooked-for emergency. The fish 

 are taken out of the pond and confined in these tanks with water 

 running through them for a considerable time — two or three days at 

 least — and in there they are not fed. We find that they travel very 

 much better on empty stomachs than they do after a meal, and, as it 

 does not seem to do them any harm to starve them a little, we do not 

 feed them before sending them away, and we find that the result is 

 perfectly satisfactory. These are the cans which I described before 

 for putting them in. They have the ice on the top, and the fish in 

 the cavity below. 



Now, what is the outcome of all this ? We have cultivated fish 

 now for thirty years or more, and we have got to know a good deal 

 more about them than we knew at the beginning of that time. Well, 

 we find on looking round that a great many, in fact a large majority, 

 of the streams of this country are in their present state almost 

 worthless. They will not hold trout of any size, and it is very 

 difficult indeed to get good fishing. Little worthless brooks have, in 

 cases where they have been dealt with, been made to produce tons of 

 fish, and one — a brook which practically would not produce fish at 



