49 



ticated trout, thej will prefer to seek the shelter and food which they 

 find around the houses of man, to the precarious chances of a wild 

 and roaming life. This may not be probable. I do not think it is 

 impossible. 



At any rate, whether trout ever come io jprefer the haunts of men 

 or not, and remain around them, without being confined, this result 

 has been accomplished — namely, that when artificially bred and con- 

 fined, they become tame, and thrive and breed even better than in 

 their native freedom. 



The subject assigned me on this occasion ofiers a broad and tempt- 

 ing field, in which it is no easy matter to choose any specified path, 

 for to select any one must be to leave numberless others, no less 

 interesting, untrodden. At the same time, to confine within the 

 limits of a half hour's reading any kind of treatment of so large a 

 subject, which shall not be wholly superficial, only one or two points 

 can be taken up and considered, and they will represent only a very 

 small fragment of the whole subject. 



I shall therefore, even at the risk of a fragmentary production, 

 select two salient points, and confine myself to these. 



These two points are (1), the question of the practicability of 

 raising the young try ; and (2), the pecuniary aspect of trout- 

 growing. I select the first, because I think it is uppermost in the 

 minds of the initiated ; and the second, because I think it is upper- 

 most in the minds of the uninitiated. 



The raising of the young fry ti'out has been the most perplexing 

 and inscrutable of all the branches of trout breeding. Plow to hatch 

 the eggs, which really hatch themselves, if %\\\w^^ i)rotected from the 

 dangers which beset them, was a problem comparatively easy in its 

 solution, although this was a grand achievement at first, in virtue of 

 its originality, and reflects great credit on those who pioneered it 

 through ; the more so, because it was success in hatching the eggs that 

 first popularized the art of fish culture, and laid the foundations of 

 the present wide-spread interest in it. 



But to make the young trout live, which have equally delicate 

 and more complex organizations than the eggs ; to find them the 

 food which is wholesome for them, while it is wholly artificial ; to 

 anticipate wants which are not ev^en known ; to discover derange- 

 ments of organs, when the organs themselves are microscopic, and 

 to avert diseases, without a glimpse of their causes ; in short, to 

 make creatures live, so frail that a touch will almost kill them, so 

 small that their wants cannot be observed, and that seem to die with- 



