Fish-cultural Conditions at forest Park 317 



however, having your nose in earp entrails continuously for hours to 

 determine contents of stomachs and intestines is not the most pleasant 

 work. We are planning to put up a building to be used as a laboratory 

 for the state fish hatchery, for the purpose of studying plants, insects, 

 and fish and their relationships. You will all be welcome to come to 

 the Kansas State hatchery and work when this building is constructed 

 The building will be primarily for the students of the University of 

 Kansas, but students from other universities and colleges will be wel- 

 comed to carry on certain investigations which should be carried on 

 to clear up a considerable number of problems connected with fish 

 culture, and particularly the black bass, perhaps the best known and 

 most highly prized fish in the interior part of the country. 



In my paper I will refer to the fact that we are building 83 new 

 ponds for the special purpose of raising black bass, crappie, blue gills, 

 sunfish and catfish; but we raise many of them in the same pond; and 

 we may say also that many of these ponds are intended for black bass. 

 The subject of plant life in its relation to insect life, and plant life and 

 insect life in relation to fish life, particularly young fish life, is a sub- 

 ject upon which it seems very hard to get any definite information. 

 We hope with a laboratory for such investigations that something may 

 be found out about fishes, especially the young fishes, that will he a 

 little more definite; and when we come to stock a pond with fish it will 

 also be stocked with the proper plants. This will enable the ponds to 

 be managed so that the plant life will aid the fish life. This is one of 

 the ideas we hope to carry out in the development of this new hatchery. 



Mr. Worth : Before we leave this question of the bass I want to 

 say that this matter of the plant growth in bass ponds is a very seriou 

 ('lie. There are some ponds which can be drawn in the winter time to 

 freeze this moss out. Even then it is only partially killed. Rut at 

 stations where the water is scarce, they cannot afford to draw ponds 

 down every time they want to get the moss out; and during the wintei 

 season with fish contained in ponds, the water cannot fie drawn off 

 for freezing purposes. 



Our moss this year had to he removed. The usual method was to 

 take a fiat-bottomed boat or skiff and use rakes, but this was laborious 

 and expensive and cost altogether too much. Then 1 undertook to cut 

 the moss out from the shore, and used barbed wire made fast to small 

 rope, dropped it on the bottom and sawed back and forth. In this way 

 we cut out a good deal of the moss, but not all. Then I put chains on 

 the barbed wire and found that they went down into the soft mud and 

 cut underneath the plants, and after all we had to go over the pond-. 

 with rakes. Then I thought to obtain discarded band saws which I 

 riveted together, making something that would have the weight to keep 

 it on the bottom and still have the breadth to prevent it from going into 

 the mud, so that it would cut the plants off at the bottom, like cutting- 

 down hay. I did not apply the band saw idea; but in discussing it with 

 others whom I thought would take an interest I learned that there is a 



