MAREXZELLER — PISCICULTURAL ESTABLISHMENT, ST. POLTEN. 657 



cut in strips and pieces with a knife, a sausage-machine having beeu 

 found impracticable, as it only partly tore the sinews but did not sepa- 

 rate them entirely. It frequently happened in consequence that fish 

 were choked by endeavoring to swallow large pieces of meat and sinews 

 sticking together. 



The feeding of the young trout and saibling with good and sufficient 

 food, from the moment they lose the umbilical bag till the time when 

 they can be fed on meat or fish, is really the point on which their rational 

 culture depends. This will influence the percentage of their mortality, 

 and their more or less rapid and successful growth. It is absolutely 

 necessary to give the fish not only good but also sufficient food. Brains, 

 liver, &c, which have been proposed, cannot be called "good" fish food, 

 and the question as to what is understood by "sufficient" can scarcely 

 be answered by those who immediately place their young fry in the 

 ponds, leaving their further fate in the hands of a kind Providence. 

 People who do this will say that the fish when put in ponds are placed 

 in similar surroundings as they would find in open waters, and this is 

 all that is considered necessary for their farther development. In rea- 

 soning in this manner, however, people entirely forget that it ought to 

 be the object of pisciculture to offer the fish more than nature can do — 

 a luxurious but never a starving existence. This does not exclude the 

 possibility that occasionally such experiments are successful, and that 

 the ponds to which the young fish have been assigned contain a super- 

 abundance of food ; but then it will always be a venture. There should 

 be absolute certainty with regard to the occurrence of food, and wherever 

 the fine net or the microscope only shows few animalcnla suitable for 

 fish-food, this want should immediately be supplied. When I visited 

 Mr. Fruwirth's establishment I was surprised at the enormous quantity 

 of insect larvae and lower crustaceans* living in the dense wilderness of 

 chara which covered the bottom of the ponds. One pond, however, 

 which only three weeks ago had been dug up, showed no signs whatever 

 of vegetation. The clear and rapidly-flowing water of the Traisen does 

 not seem to contain any of the above-mentioned animalcula, but when 

 I pulled up some of the thick moss {Fontinalis antlpyrctica L., Rhyncho- 

 stegium rusciforme Br. et Schimp.) covering the pieces of rock and 

 quickly examined it, I discovered a rich animal life, which had found 

 shelter and food among the moss. Thus the well-known proportional 

 relation between vegetable and animal life also proves to be of great 

 importance to the pisciculturist. It will be his first care to produce 

 a luxuriant vegetation. The natural conditions of Freiland, which 

 must be considered extremely favorable to the development of the 



* Prof. Dr. F. Brauer recognized among those gathered during August the larvse of 

 Perlacephalotes P., Xemura sp., Chloecondipterwm L., Hydropsyche sp., I!hyacophi!a sp., 

 Stenophylax sp., Hydroptila sp., Aiheryx Ibis, Simulia sp., Culex sylvatica L„ Chironom- 

 idens, Elmis ameus Mull. , &c. I myself found two species of Daphnicl (Alona, Simoapha- 

 Ins), two species of Cyclops, and one species of Cypris. 

 S. Miss. 59 42 



