11)0 Tliirtif-Secoiul Annual Meeting 



color and take on the color of the old fish would be the time to 

 call them fingerlings. 



Mr. Bower : That would do very well with the small-mouth, 

 but not the large-mouth bass. 



Mr. Beeman : I would confine it to that. 



Mr. Lydell : It seems to me we are all satisfied in regard to 

 the small-mouth bass, but the large-mouth is what we are trying 

 to get at, but everybody is satisfied that bass planted at that age 

 are nearly as good as they are when twice as long. So I do not 

 think the matter will develop anything very serious. 



Mr. Atkins: I would like to suggest that the committee be 

 authorized to consider the question of the name yearling. As I 

 understand, it has been the custom to call fish six or seven 

 months old, yearlings. I have never done it myself. In order to 

 keep out of difficult}'' I have always stated the age of my fish in 

 months — six, four or two as the case might be — but I have not 

 adopted the name fingerling, because I could not determine just 

 what it did mean, and therefore avoided using it. It would be a 

 convenient term, and when this committee has decided what it 

 means I shall be glad to adopt it. I think according to the dic- 

 tionary and the usage in the nomenclature of other animals, no 

 animal is called a yearling until it is a year old, and then it is a 

 yearling until it is two years old ; and it seems to me it would be 

 entirely proper to adopt that standard with fish. 



Mr. Seymour Bower: Would the gentleman consider the 

 beginning of the year the time the egg is laid, or the time the 

 fish hatches? 



Mr. Atkins : The time the fish hatches. 



Mr. Ravenel : That question has been raised very often in 

 connection M'ith the preparation of the United States Fish Com- 

 mission reports. The difficulty arises from the fact that some 

 fish are spring spawners and others are fall spawners ; though we 

 do call the fry resulting from eggs taken in the spring and fall, 

 yearlings, when distributed in the fall, it has been based on the 

 theory that the majority of the salmonidae distributed result 

 from eggs taken in the fall, and we estimated the year as from 

 the time the eggs were taken to the time the fisli were distrihiited 

 — where they were carried an additional year they were consid- 

 ered as two years old. The definition, perhaps, was not accurate. 



