PIKE-PERCH NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS 



By W. O. Buck 



In his valuable paper presented at the International 

 Fisheries Congress two years ago Professor Gill urged the 

 careful study of fishes, and the writer ventures to add the 

 suggestion tliat much more should be written and circulated 

 regarding the results of our studies and also of our chance 

 observations, the latter being of the sort to which most of 

 us are more liable. If each will write all he knows of each 

 variety, the sum total will be none too much, but can hardly 

 fail to be greater than has yet been printed. Of course 

 there will be a lot of repetition, but here and there some- 

 thing new will appear. When the stock becomes too bulky 

 and too much diluted there will always be somebody to 

 simmer it down and get the actual meat of the whole into 

 the form of a solid extract, which may prove excellent brain- 

 food. But let us enforce the pure food law, and label facts, 

 estimates, and hopes distinctly and separately, remembering 

 that one fact is worth more than any amount of doubtful 

 record. Even if an effort has resulted in failure, the failure 

 should be made to clearly appear. This is not to be a sermon, 

 and the frank statement of the truth is urged not because 

 truth is the highest moral good, but because it is good 

 business. 



The following notes of a first experience with pike-perch 

 eggs and fry are offered, not for the enlightenment of those 

 who have handled such, but because they may serve to draw 

 the attention of some other beginner to some of the diffi- 

 culties likely to be met and also suggest indirectly some 

 points at which advance should be made in the work with 

 other fish as well as with these. 



At 10 o'clock A.M., April 23d, arrived a case containing 

 1,800,000 eggs of pike-perch packed and shipped April 

 20th. On opening the case the trays were found to have a 



