196 American Fisheries Society 



The next thing our commissioner tried to introduce was the Rocky 

 Mountain whitefish, which is commonly called the grayling by people 

 in Colorado and some parts of Wyoming; but it is a misnomer. They 

 have mouths like the whitefish, and we put them into troughs of the 

 hatchery at Steamboat Springs, and hatch out 300,000. They are 

 abundant in Bear River right alongside the trout ; and when I took 

 charge for a couple of months of that hatchery to continue the hatching 

 and rearing of those grayling, I found it a failure, because they should 

 be liberated like whitefish or hatched in jars. However, I saved some 

 of them. We have them here in bottles, and I raised them to that 

 stage. They lived without food for two months. I have kept trout 

 without food, for experiment, in water 36° and kept them three months 

 so that they were nearly starved to death. The whitefish would not 

 feed — they all died off. So we have not yet succeeded in making a suc- 

 cess of the reproduction of the Rocky Mountain whitefish. That is all 

 I have to say, except to answer any questions that you may desire 

 to ask, 



Mr. Ignatz Baldus, Indianapolis: At the fish hatchery I saw 

 where they were feeding fish liver, lights and lungs, etc. Now, I be- 

 lieve that these fish when they get so that they will eat, would do 

 better if they were put in ponds, where they could get natural food, 

 same as they find in the wild stage, that you will have much stronger 

 and healthier fingerling than under present conditions. 



Mr. Land: We have adopted a plan that overcomes the difficulty 

 of the feeding of fingerling in hatchery ponds for any length of time. 

 We cooperate with the railroads and get them to build natural nursery 

 ponds along the lines of their roads on the principal streams through- 

 out this Rocky Mountain state. We turn fish over to them ; they have 

 men to look after them ; they grow to fingerling size ; and they are 

 doing that now. That saves us from raising fingerlings in the hatchery. 

 We cannot afford to raise fingerlings because we could not 

 transport more than a few hundred in a can ; while we can 

 transport 2,500 fry such as you see in a hatchery ; and two or three 

 weeks they should be in the public streams. They live on microscopic 

 food, and they live on the eggs of insects and on the insects them- 

 selves until they become big enough to become cannibals and live on the 

 young of inferior fish. We find that they grow 50% faster after 

 being taken out of troughs. Every fish in this hatchery will be dis- 

 tributed by the end of this month, and so with all the other hatcheries 

 of the state; because we distribute the rainbow and the natives to 

 make room for the brook trout hatch in the fall. We have three 

 hatches a year and we cannot always put them in nursery ponds. Our 

 water supply will not admit of it : but when we plant them in these 

 lakes they live on natural food and do not die and are exterminated 

 only by their enemies. 



Mr. Cranston : I want to inquire whether it is a matter of economy 

 or whether it is the best policy that you are advocating. Suppose you 



