176 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



When I went into business I thought it would be a good plan to do the 

 same thing in trout, so I have been selecting my trout from that time on. 



While Mr. Cobb's paper is all right in one way, yet if a commercial 

 man that raises trout continues to use yearling eggs his stock gets 

 smaller all the time. I have this to say, and my experience is this, that 

 this year we have the best fingerhngs we have ever had and I think the 

 reason is because I have selected my best trout to breed from, both 

 males and females. While the young trout eggs may do well for wild 

 streams, yet you put them out and do not know what becomes of them. 

 They may do well; and I would not say they would not do as well as 

 other trout; but the commercial man will find if he follows it up for a 

 few years that he will be in trouble. 



Last season we put into the Boston market something like 1500 

 pounds of trout that would not be two years old until January and 

 February — we put them on the market weighing one-quarter to one- 

 third of a pound. I could not do that when I commenced. I cannot 

 get suitable recompense from the eggs from our old trout and I would 

 not keep them at all, select them, and carry them along, with eggs at 

 80 cents a thousand. You know, every man that is conversant with the 

 state hatcheries, that the state cannot produce trout eggs for less than 

 two dollars a thousand. That is my experience in raising trout from 

 1888 up to the present time. 



Mr. Cobb : The United States Government buys millions of those 

 eggs from trout two years old and over; we in the states are buying 

 milHons. Your trout in the market in New York and western cities 

 are running from one-fifth to one-third of a pound. Where do those 

 millions of trout eggs, from fish two years old and over, that we are 

 buying at from fifty cents to a dollar a thousand, come from? If they 

 come from yearling trout, let us get right down to it, and not try to 

 face an impossible condition. If it costs two dollars a thousand to 

 raise eggs of these selected trout, we are not buying them for fifty 

 cents nor a dollar a thousand. The United States Government I know 

 did demand eggs from fish two years old and over. But the United 

 States Government said nothing in those contracts about where the milt 

 for these eggs should be obtained. The man with the strictest con- 

 science you ever saw could fertilize everyone of these eggs with 

 yearling milt if he wanted to; he could use all yearling males. It has 

 the same influence on the eggs as to use yearling females. 



But eggs coming from yearling trout are said to hurt the trout. I 

 know one trout company that carried over a lot of two year old fish 

 and was putting their eggs on the market; they sell eggs to the United 

 States Government and the United States Government knows they are 

 yearling eggs. I know what they did with 250,000 of them in 1907. 

 They gave them to the state hatcheries. They were no better to hatch 

 in the state than in the government hatchery, but the record on those 

 eggs was one of the best the state hatchery made that year. Those 

 eggs at least were good. 



Mr. W. O. Buck, Neosho, Mo. : I have handled a good many lots of 

 eggs from private hatcheries, and some from Mr. Hurlbut's which were 



