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agricultural practice of the native Indian, who partly cleared 

 his little patches in the river bottoms and planted and harvested 

 the exotic corn and bean and pumpkin. 



But it will not do to push this parallel too far. There are 

 some things possible in agriculture which the aquaculturist 

 cannot do. We cannot plow and till our lakes and rivers as the 

 farmer does the prairie sod, ruthlessly exterminating all the 

 native forms of life in order to substitute other sorts more 

 useful to him. And even where we clear a little lake or start a 

 pond, stocking it with carp or croppie, we cannot keep out the 

 frogs and bullheads by any artificial tillage, as the farmer can 

 the weeds. We are compelled, in other words, to work for 

 improvement in the midst of things as they are. Not being 

 able to destroy the native population of our waters, we have 

 to take it into account and then make our adjustments to it. 

 And right here, it has long seemed to me, is where the work is 

 most needed. If we cannot get rid of the natural order, we 

 certainly need to understand it. If we cannot destroy the 

 native population, but must live and work with and through it^ 

 we certainly ought to know what it is like and what we can do 

 with it ; what we can do in spite of it, and what we cannot do 

 because of it. It is because I have worked out some parts of 

 an answer to these questions that I have ventured to appear here 

 to-day, in a society of fish-culturists. If fish-culture is merely 

 the culture of fishes, then I can have little or nothing to say, 

 because I never raised a fish in my life ; but if a scientific and 

 rational fish-culture must finally merge in the broader science 

 and art of aquaculture ; if we must study to understand and 

 improve the system of aquatic life into the midst of which we 

 thrust our little fishes, — then I may perhaps claim some share 

 in your deliberations. 



What I have to report to-day is chiefly an answer to the 

 question : What do our native fishes eat ? This is only a single 

 item of what we really need to know, and yet perhaps a larger 

 one than might at first be supposed. Although fishes are the 

 dominant class in every fairly permanent body of fresh water, 

 they have no great variety of interests or occupations ; but 

 •except for the relatively brief intervals devoted to their simple 



