81 



emanations continue. Even if tlie water is not i^oisoned 

 to such an extent as to cause the death of the fishes, it is 

 fatal to nearly all of the ordinary fish-food, which amounts 

 to the same thing. 



This is a matter that is not often thought of, but it is 

 a very vital one, nevertheless, and one that lies at the very 

 root of the cause of the decline of fishes in our inland 

 streams. To destroy the food of fishes is to destroy the 

 fishes themselves, or compel them to evacuate streams 

 thus depleted of food for more favorable locations, if 

 possible. 



A farmer who shuts up his jDoultry in an empty house, 

 or turns his cattle into a newly-ploughed field, and ex- 

 l>ects them to thrive and grow fat, is not more foolish 

 than the fish culturist who plants a lot of young fishes in 

 a i^olluted stream with the expectation or intention of re- 

 stocking it or of restoring it to its former abundance. 



Then, again, a stream may be reasonably pure, but be so 

 obf^tructed by dams of saw-mills, grist-mills, etc., that 

 fishes passing over them at certain times cannot return. 

 It is useless to stock such streams wdth migratory or anad- 

 romous fishes. Only fishes of quiet and non-migratory 

 liabits should be introduced, and yet millions of brook- 

 trout have been planted in Just such streams, only to pass 

 dow^n over the dams, never to return. 



Brook-trout streams are usually depopulated by the axe 

 of the lumberman. In the first place, by cutting off tlie 

 timber at the head of a brook, the sunlight finds entrance 

 to its once cool, moist and mossy banks, wdiere the feathery 

 fern and the trailing arbutus and the partridge-berry once 

 luxuriated, and where the larval and insect food of the baby- 

 trout was bred in myriads ; the mosses and ferns wither and 

 die, the arbutus and the ground-j^ine shrivel up, the soil 

 gives up its moisture, the insects disappear, and when the 

 neAvly-hatched trout absorbs its volk-sack, its little life 



