140 Tzventy-nintJi Annual Meeting 



planting" a necessit} . For ease of manipulation, freedom from the 

 trouble and worry of snow and ice, leaves and freshets, with soil 

 and debris laden waters, the interminable work with screens, the 

 danger of washouts and the various other unenumerated hin- 

 drances ; give me, if }ou please, spring v^'ater or water from a 

 driven well, temperature 45 to 50, sufificient fall for aeration and 

 yet with troughs at comfortable working" height. 



The spawn, shall it be from wild or domesticated hsh? I 

 believe it cannot be gainsaid that eggs from the latter — at their 

 best — with proper and sufficient food, good range and a mod- 

 erately cool temperature, are larger and produce larger fry, which, 

 "vvith an inheritance one generation, at least, removed from the 

 wild state, are more easilv handled and more susceptible to the 

 enforced artificial conditions awaiting them in their life of cap- 

 tivity. On the other hand, and may I not say, in the majority of 

 cases, improper feeding, either a lack or an excess as to quantity, 

 insufficient as to variety, and. as we all know, during the hot 

 summer months at lea&t, too often most offensively deficient as 

 to quality ; the lack of exercise owing to restricted range 

 and being freed from the necessity of "hustling" for a 

 living, all conspire to sap the constitution of the parent and 

 tend to produce fry with but little inherent vigor and vitality, and 

 especially so when coupled with generations of inbreeding. 

 Under the usual conditions incident to captivity, I believe I am 

 perfectly justified in stating' that the concensus of opinion is 

 largely in favor of spawn from wild fish as being more uniformly 

 satisfactory. 



Thorough and continuous aereation is the great essential in 

 hatching". A given quantity of water flowing in to a trough will 

 renew itself twice as frequently when kept at a depth of three 

 inches than if kept at six incnes, so we drop in our trough a 

 three-inch galvanized dam for the present. The tail screen is the 

 greatest death trap ever placed in a trough, but we cannot do 

 without it ; let us lessen its murderous suction power by extend- 

 ing the distance from the Niagara of the dam; make it, say, four 

 inches at least. Much has been said of the additional aereation 



