ELEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 91 



structions which follow will be of little use to those who suppose 

 that the pond can be filled with fishes and left to take care of itself. 

 To be made productive it will require intelligent care and consid- 

 erable work. Those who are not interested to that extent may as 

 well abandon the idea of raising fish and save the expense of 

 stocking the pond. 



For the encouragement of those who are disposed to make a 

 trial it may be stated with perfect fairness that food fishes can be 

 raised with no more difficulty than chickens or vegetables. All 

 persons who have experimented with the poultry yard and the 

 garden know that they demand attention. A neglected fish-pond 

 may be compared to a neglected garden, and will eventually reach 

 the same gone-to-seed condition. 



The raising of trout is not considered in this connection : Trout 

 require special conditions of water supply and temperature and 

 there are already in existence many volumes on the subject of 

 trout breeding. \Miile it is a fish that most owners of ponds hope 

 to cultivate, it is essentially one that can not be managed except 

 under naturally favorable conditions, and it demands more atten- 

 tion than it is likely to receive at the hands of the amateur. Trout 

 culture is in active progress all over the land, and there are nu- 

 merous commercial trout culturists from whom fry and yearlings 

 may be purchased. Brown trout and rainbow trout, it should 

 be stated, are more suitable for small lakes than brook trout, and 

 will stand warmer water and grow considerably larger. The 

 brook trout does not naturally inhabit waters having a tem- 

 perature much above 60 degrees. 



With the ordinary run of ponds in the New York region, where 

 the water becomes rather warm in summer, it is necessary to 

 restrict the list of available fishes to the basses, perches, and 

 sunfishes to which they are adapted. This paper therefore deals 

 with the commoner fishes only. 



There are few sections of the country so lacking in native fishes 

 that enough black bass, rock bass, yellow perch, white perch, 

 crappie. blue-gill sunfish, long-eared sunfish, or catfish can not 

 be procured for the purpose of stocking. 



State fish commissions can not usually furnish fishes for private 

 waters, and much of the fish stock supplied by the national com- 

 mission for private waters has, through ignorance on the part 

 of the recipient, been lost, washed away by floods into public 

 waters, or consumed when mature, without the conditions neces- 

 sary to propagation having been supplied. 



Some of the above named pond-fishes occur in almost every 



