100 American Fisheries Society 



if they ever do grow up they have no life, no vitality, and 

 no future. 



You say this is a very dark picture. A 1 embers of the 

 American Fisheries Society, the picture is true to life. 

 There are exceptions of course, but they only go to prove the 

 rule. Why I have seen eggs, not only one lot but several 

 lots, come from these mush-fed breeders that were dear at 

 15 cents a thousand, and if we keep this up 1 can see nothing 

 for the future. Of course there is a remedy and that remedy 

 is right in our own hands. We have the power to stop this 

 method or methods that I have been describing. Get back 

 to nature and nature's ways; provide large roomy ponds 

 with an abundance of pure cold water: introduce into these 

 ponds natural food, the food that the trout like in their wild 

 state; take no eggs from fish that are less than two and one- 

 half years old; get the fry in your stream as soon as they de- 

 stroy the yolk sac; and never let them taste liver unless it is 

 absolutely necessary to carry them along: then when these 

 fish grow up and the sportsman who perhaps has helped to 

 plant them goes to the stream he finds fish, good, strong. 

 healthy fish that jump for his lure like the trout of the old 

 days. 



1 am not talking from some imaginary case. 1 have 

 experimented with liver-fed or mush- fed fish and with fish 

 treated as if they were in their wild state. As for the for- 

 mer I would just as soon catch so many suckers. But it is 

 the future of our trout that I am looking out for. Take any 

 other living thing, from man down, and treat it the way our 

 brood trout are treated and how long would the race last? 

 Only a few generations. You cannot disregard the laws of 

 nature and expect nature to smile on you, for the closer we 

 follow nature the better results we will have. This is true 

 of every living thing. 



Now I know that some of you will not agree fully with 

 what I say in this paper, but T do want you, every one who 

 raises brook trout either for the market or for stocking the 

 streams of state or nation, to think this matter over: look 



