... 0-t 



cality, and thus enable us to avoid planting in the 

 wrong place, and over-planting in the right place. 



If a definite number of artificially hatched fry might 

 be transferred to strictly natural environment at the 

 moment of hatching, no doubt the results would equal 

 the results from a like number of fry hatched in nature: 

 It therefore follows that if the ratio of fish matured 

 from the former is less than from this latter, it is 

 because we have failed to equalize conditions at the 

 start. There are strono- cri"oi-ii"'ds for belief that this 

 ratio is less, and that the unequal start in the race for 

 life is responsible for the difference. 



The white fish, unlike the small mouth black bass, 

 which protects its bed from the depredations of spawn 

 eating fish, fans away the sediment that might smother 

 the embryos, separates the fungussed lumps by an oc- 

 casional quick " fiirt " of the tail, and thus produces a 

 group of 2,000 to 6,000 young fish from a deposit of 

 10,000 to 15,000 eggs, casts its spawn and immediately 

 departs, leaving such of the germs as may have been 

 fertilized exposed for a period of five or six months to 

 manifold agencies of destruction ; to the mud puppies 

 and spawn eating fishes that assemble and lurk for the 

 rich feast that awaits them ; to the deadly blight of 

 .fungus, and to be washed away from the reefs to settle 

 and smother in mud and sediment. The percentage of 

 fry produced under such circumstances must be very 

 small ; in fact, one of those poor germs must feel some- 

 thing like the man who, after listening to an exhortation 

 wherein it was shown that over 400.000 persons go to 

 the bad place for everyone that succeeds in getting to 

 Heaven, retired with the remark : Brothers and Sisters, 

 you are all welcome to my chance." And yet, from 

 this source alone, the lakes were once teeming with 

 white fish, at a time, too, when predatory fishes, to pfey 

 on the young, were present in much greater abundance 



