8 Fish and Game Warden. [Bull. No. 1. 



The Chinese and Japanese are credited with having ac- 

 complished wonders, in the development of goldfish, in the 

 production of rich shades of color and unique designs in form. 

 The uncultivated wild goldfish is of a dull olivaceous green. 

 The beautiful shades of red, gold, silver and black, and the 

 various odd designs in shape found among these fishes, have 

 been artificially produced and propagated by natural selection, 

 the fish having been kept in ponds and handled and bred with 

 as much care as any other stock that was to be improved under 

 the influences of domestication. Nature has imposed no bar- 

 rier, so far as I know, that would prevent the development of 

 many of our own game and food fishes in quality, size and 

 hardiness, provided they were subjected to the same intelligent 

 care and oversight that has developed our best varieties of 

 vegetable and animal forms of life. In Germany, and many 

 other places in Europe, the rearing of fish and the various 

 problems connected with fish culture have been in the past 

 and are at the present time receiving a very considerable 

 amount of attention. The rearing of fish for food purposes 

 and for profit is looked upon much in the same light as the 

 rearing of poultry and live stock in general. Not only are 

 the streams utilized, but all natural ponds, lakes and sheets 

 of water have been improved and are being used for fish- 

 culture purposes. 



In addition to this, I am told by some of our good American 

 Germans who have recently visited the fatherland, that thou- 

 sands of pieces of ground that were swampy or otherwise un- 

 profitable have been converted into fish ponds and are now 

 made to yield fish food products of great value to the masses 



of people. 



NATURAL PONDS. 



For the purpose of consideration, the subject of ponds nat- 

 urally divides itself into two parts — natural and artificial. 



Natural ponds in the state of Kansas are not very numerous. 

 Most of them have been formed by rivers and creeks that have 

 changed their channels and left bodies of water in their old 

 beds. Some of these sheets of water make fairly good fish 

 ponds, but as a rule they are more or less subject to overflow 

 from the adjacent streams during periods of high water and 

 are liable to lose most of their water, or even to go dry, during 

 periods of drought. Such bodies of water are very unsatis- 

 factory for fish-culture purposes. 



There are other natural ponds formed by springs that run 

 into natural basins, and still others that owe their existence to 

 natural basins that catch the water from adjacent sloping 

 grounds. These latter are called sky ponds by the Germans, 

 as all the water that is drained into them comes directly, in 

 rains and snows, from the sky. These natural ponds usually 

 have muddy bottoms, with an accumulation of old leaves, weeds 

 and various kinds of trash that have blown or have been 



