Forbes. — Survey of Illinois River 87 



found in its stomach. This pond was full of growing vegetation and 

 it was not possible to handle or separate the fish until it was drained. 

 However, we got over 50,000 young fish from it. 



During the spring many goldfish also spawned in this pond. They 

 came within from 6 to 15 inches of the shore to spawn. They seemed 

 to be afraid of the bass and observations went to show that they had 

 good reasons for their fear, for the bass were seen swimming near 

 the shores watching for them. When a goldfish was thrown in the 

 water a few feet from the shore it was usually grabbed by a bass. The 

 goldfish had little roadways in the moss near the shore where they 

 traveled, and along these roadways in the fine grass and moss they 

 deposited their eggs. Soon after the goldfish eggs hatched, schools of 

 little bass could be seen using these same roadways, and the little 

 goldfish began to disappear. Examination of some young specimens 

 of bass went to show that they were not only feeding upon young 

 goldfish, but were eating their own kind. Young bass seem to begin 

 to feed upon one another when they are scarcely two inches long. One 

 of the serious problems about black bass culture at the Kansas hatchery 

 is the cannibalistic nature of the young and growing stock. 



Mr. Meehax : 1 do not want to go on record as saying positively 

 that fish will or will not be killed by lightning, but 1 would like to give 

 two bits of experience that I have had as showing that under some cir- 

 cumstances at least fish may be killed by lightning. 



Professor Dyche: I am not positive on the subject, for I always 

 doubted the lightning theory. 



Mr. Meehax : A few years ago at i me of our hatcheries at Allentown, 

 since abandoned, we had some ponds containing brook trout, others 

 containing rainbows, and others containing brown trout. Very little 

 surface water got into these ponds. They had a very abundant supply 

 of spring water. Now after every severe storm whenever lightning 

 would strike the ground within a short distance of those ponds, a 

 large number of the brown trout and the rainbow trout would be 

 killed. Some of them, after the storm was over, would be found dead, 

 others struggling around in the pond very languidly, twisted and con- 

 torted and apparently something wrong with them. They would die 

 within a few days. The le>ss in these ponds after each big storm, 

 where lightning had struck the ground within a few hundred yards of 

 them, was great, sometimes as many as 100 or 200 of those brown 

 trout or rainbows would be found dead. The brook trout, however, 

 rarely were killed. The indications were that they had not been 

 shocked; and it was found always that it was either the brown or the 

 rainbow trout, or the fish which touched the stone on the bottom of 

 the pond, which were killed. So wherever the brown or brook trout 

 were swimming free in the ponds they escaped, but wherever the 

 stones were touched they were killed. 



During the summer I received letters from all over the state about 

 the death of fish in the streams, usually attributed to dynamiting. But 



