152 Thirtieth Annual Meeting 



BROOK TROUT NOTES. 



BY W. T. THOMPSON. 



Our country is peculiarly fortunate in the great area of its 

 trout waters. There are but few localities, excepting the extreme 

 south and some of the prairie states which cannot boast of one or 

 more suitable streams. 



Varieties and sub-varieties are scarcely less numerous than 

 are the waters. Each sectio]i has its aspirant for the popular 

 favor, some favorite son as it were, whose peculiar claims are 

 always loyally, if not consistently paraded for public view. 

 They also have the "Brook Trout." You will find it the same 

 story everywhere, always: the "Brook Trout" and — some other 

 trout. The iminitiated finally concludes there are but two divi- 

 sions: the "Brook Trout" and the oihcr trout. 



I wish to call attention to two points mentioned in my paper 

 last year : 



1. Early feeding of fry. Fry should always be taught to 

 feed before they can swim, when you see them begin to withdraw 

 from tlie huddling, wriggling mass and take up a separate and 

 individual existence, scurrying independently around the bottom 

 of the trough, you may know that, in response to nature's de- 

 mands, they are looking for food. Give it to them, no after care 

 can make amends for neglect now. They require but little at a 

 time. Give it to them in homeopathic doses. Don't foul your 

 troughs. Brook Trout, in common with some other members of 

 the Salmonidae will begin to feed from one to three weeks, vary- 

 ing with the water temperatures, before they can swim. Try it. 

 Try it yourself. Don't entrust this most important work to 

 some one simply because he can't do anything else satisfactorily. 

 Mr. J. W. Titcomb, our former president, has a most delight- 

 fully dry vein of humor which he taps on proper occasion as 

 when he remarked last summer during his illustrated lecture at 

 Woods Hole, in explanation of a certain lantern slide : "We 

 once had a very lazy man at St. Johnsbury. I had heard that it 

 took a lazv man to feed fish, so T tried liim." Adding with a 



