XXII.-REPORT OF OPERATIONS AT THE UNITED STATES TROUT 

 PONDS, MTLOUD RIVER, CALIFORNIA, FOR THE SEASON OF 



1881. 



By Livingston Stone. 



Hon. Spencer F. Bated : 



Sir : I beg leave to rei)ort as follows : At tlie date of my last report, 

 December 31, 1880, everything at the tront-liatcliing station on the Mc- 

 Clond Kiver appeared to predict an unusually prosperous season. No 

 exertion had been spared to collect breeding fish for the ponds, and it 

 is estimated that at the beginning of the year the ponds contained 3,000 

 very large breeding trout, none of which weighed less than a pound, 

 while half of them weighed over five, and a few upwards of eight pounds. 

 The average weight of the whole number was not less than three pounds. 

 It was undoubtedly the finest collection of living trout in America, if 

 not in the world. They would easily have yielded nearly a million eggs. 

 But the bright promise of Christmas week was doomed to bring only 

 disappointment and disaster. As I said, everything was favorable at 

 that time. There had been no great rainfall up to the 1st of January, 

 the trout were healthy and doing well, the water was good, the spawn- 

 ing time was close at hand, and the trout ponds seemed to be on the 

 verge of a great success. But never were appearances more deceitful. 

 In January it began to rain as it had never rained before in this region 

 since white men came here. Four solid feet of water, lacking an inch, 

 fell at Shasta City during this month, and here in the mountains the 

 rainfall must have been much greater. The McCloud rose to an alarm- 

 ing height, but still no danger was apprehended at the trout ponds, be- 

 cause this station was built so far above the river, and no injury did 

 come from the rise in the river. The mischief that was done proceeded 

 from an entirely unexpected source, which well ilhistrates the fact that 

 in a new country like this when trouble begins no one can tell what will 

 come next. 



The calamity that befell the trout, and it was a most serious one, was 

 caused directly by mud, and only indirectly by water. The enormous 

 volume of water poured down from the sky almost literally liquified the 

 soil on the hillsides, so that it actually flowed down into the valleys 

 below. In some instances on a steep hill-side a whole acre of soil to an 

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