PROPAGATION OF FISH. 233 
« 
pound trout is five hundred, and I believe it frequently 
exceeds a thousand, and salmon have many more. Con- 
ceive, for a moment, if each female trout produx^ed one- 
hundred mature fish, which in three years would each 
produce one hundred more, the incredible number that 
would exist. 
The waters of the earth are capable, if as well tilled, 
of supporting as many as the land ; and there is no 
reason why they should not be cultivated. Kothing is 
simpler ; as with the land a savage may scratch up the 
earth sufficiently with a stick to support himself and 
family, a scientific farmer, with proper tools, would in 
the same ground support a hundred times as many ; so 
with the water, a careless, lazy person will get one fish 
for ten eggs, while a thorough-going, careful laborer will 
bring to perfection almost all. 
This may be done with only the labor, which, in fact, 
is the greatest of pleasures, and at the small expense of 
feeding the fish. Young fry require fine food, such as 
meat or fish grated, but as they grow older, devour 
almost anything. Ronalds, the author of the " Fly-fisher's 
Entomology," having dosed them with cayenne pepper 
and mustard, found it not in the least disagreeable or 
apparently injurious. 
If this were an attempt to introduce fish where they 
had never before existed, there might be some doubt of 
its success, but it is merely following a course adopted in 
England and France with astonishing results, by which 
many streams that had been as totally depopulated as 
the Hudson, and none could be more so, have been 
entirely restocked, and are now sources of great profit to 
