.KNTH ANNUAL MKKTING. 77 



to consider in (Jiir \V(jrk liereiifLer — wliut tiicre ib in llie waters 

 where we propose to put fish for the 3oung to live upon, and I 

 apprehend there is not much to be gained in trying to plant fish 

 in waters where they are not indigenous, or where they have 

 not been some time. I also procured from Professor Baird, and 

 hatched, perhaps half a million of California salmon the same 

 seasons that I was hatching the others, which I deposited in the 

 lake ; but there is a little stream entering Lake Geneva — the 

 lake is fed by springs. There is really no inlet to it except the 

 springs around it, but at the upper end of the lake there is about 

 a mile of low land, and the springs running down through make 

 a little creek. I deposited the young California salmon in those 

 little streams, little springs, and they ran down into this creek- 

 Some of them I kept — perhaps fifty to one hundred thousand, 

 about half <jf tlie amount I hatched, I kept from the streams 

 until thev were yearlings, and then turned tiiem out, and we 

 have taken occasionally a California salmon, but they are not at 

 all plenty. F(jr the last two years there has not been any taken. 

 Tiiree years ago a boy took one, a very fine fish, which weighed 

 twelve and three quarter pounds, as handsome a salmon as I 

 ever saw anywhere — showing that salt doesn't enter into the 

 question at all as to the life of the salmon ; that they will grow 

 just as well in fresh water as in salt, if they have enough to eat. 

 There is an abundance of food there, and the California salmon 

 are a very hardy fish. I have no doubt if I had put as many 

 California salmon into Lake Geneva as I did salmon trout, that 

 we would had m jre of a' result from it, still I don't apprehend 

 that they would do much. I think a lake of that size and purity 

 of water, and with all the food there for the maturing of fish, 

 the California salmon might be made to flourish there if we had 

 two or three miles of good gravel bottom stream in which they 

 could spawn. I found in this little stream which runs up through 

 the marshy meadow, very low ground — it is only a small stream, 

 and the bottom is mud and the water is very cold but sluggish — 

 I found in there one day four or five large salmon that would 

 run 8 to lo lbs., splashing around up in there — it was evidently 

 their spawning season — looking for a place to spawn ; but if 

 they did lay their eggs they sank down in the mud and were 



