51 



game fishes, feeling sure that such action will have great 

 weight with our law-makers. And this will but lead to 

 other and similar fields of usefulness, in which the Society 

 may be of great service in aiding to keep up our stock of 

 fishes by common sense methods. I will refer to but one, 

 and that is the short trout law. The object of a short 

 trout law is that the trout may have the opportunity to 

 spawn at least once before they can be legally captured. I 

 am aware that a number of trout of the same age are not 

 all of the same size ; but one State has a six-inch law, an- 

 other a five-inch law, and still another asks for a four-inch 

 law. This Society could determine, between its fish cul- 

 turists and fishermen, from their observation of tame trout 

 and wild ones, what the average size of a trout is that 

 spawns for the first time, and thereafter law-makers would 

 have a guide as in the case of spawning seasons. 



BREEDING HABITS OF THE PERCH. 



By Fred Mather. 



When I agreed to write something about the breeding 

 habits of the "yellow perch," the local name of boyhood 

 days came to the front, and it now seems best to call the 

 fish the perch. This is the old English and the modern 

 English name of a fish that inhabits both continents, if 

 you accept the dictum of some of our savants, or, is an 

 American fish closely related to the European perch,, if 

 you follow others. In the northern and western States it 

 is known as "yellow perch," frorii its prevailing ground 

 color ; in the Carolinas it becomes ' ' barred " or " brown ' ' 

 perch, because of the color of its vertical stripes ; in Vir- 

 ginia it is the "ringed" perch, for the same reason, while 



