78 AMERICAN FISHERIES SOCIETY. 



lost. There is luj place there for them to hatch. I couldn't get 

 any spawning ground f(jr them. I also made an experiment in 

 brook trout in these little streams, springs around those hills, 

 and in this creek running down there, and established a fish 

 farm up there, quite a trout pond, and stocked this little 

 stream. This is eminently successful, because in the stream. 

 in the weeds and growth in the bottom they are alive with 

 the natural food of the brook trout, the little fresh-water 

 shrimp, and now that mile and a half of stream running through 

 this marsh is full of brook trout, as fine trout as I ever saw. In 

 fact, I never saw fatter and finer brook trout than I find in there. 

 I can go in there any time and take twenty-five or thirty trout in 

 an hour or two. That experiment has been eminently successful, 

 because the food is there for the fish. I thought I would give 

 you gentlemen the benefit of my experience. I have never 

 written anything about it, because it was a good deal of a ques- 

 tion in my mind whether I ought to do it, and whether I ought 

 to discourage the attempts that might be made ; but I am so 

 thoroughly satisfied that it is utterly useless that I tliink it 

 should be made public. 



Mr. Dunning. — Mr. Chairman, I would agree with Mr. Fair- 

 bank in regard to Geneva Lake. He has taken a great deal of 

 pains in stocking this lake, and it is as beautiful a lake as you 

 ever saw in your life, and it is true, as he says — 1 have been 

 there — that it has bold shores, deep water, and it would seem as 

 though it was the most perfect place that ever was made for lake 

 trout, but it is also true that they are not there. I am intimate 

 with Mr. Fairbank and know about this matter, and there was 

 no success whatever in the experiment, and it was very dis- 

 couraging. Mr. Fairbank has done more to stock the inland 

 lakes than any man I know of in the country, but I am satisfied, 

 and I think Mr. Fairbank is, that is not the fault t)f the water, 

 but it is the want of fish food. Now, Mr. Forbes in this State 

 Professor Forbes, told me, in a conversation with him at our 

 place in Madison, we had a great epidemic among our fish there 

 the summer we was there, and he came there to investigate it, 

 the perch died by the hundreds of tiiousands, and wiien he was 



