42 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



sluggish trout rivers and lakelets, they find some pool with 

 gravelly bottom where a cool spring enters. They generally 

 spawn in pairs or communities. After preparing the bed, by 

 displacing the gravel with their noses, and excavating an 

 oblong furrow of a few inches in depth, the female deposits 

 her spawn in the trench, and the male ejects his milt over it, 

 when fecundation ensues and the gravel is replaced. Another 

 furrow is then made ; the spawn and milt cast ; the ova 

 covered over as before ; and the process repeated until the 

 roe and milt are exhausted. 



The time required for hatching out the spawn, is various 

 with the different orders and families. In the same genera, 

 or even in the same species, the time may vary. Much de- 

 pends on climate and the temperature of the water ; the 

 warmer streams hatching out the eggs before those of a lower 

 temperature. The spawn of the Trout, which is deposited from 

 the middle of September to the first of November, produces 

 the young from the first of December to the first of March, 

 and in artificial ponds, if protected from the cold winds, the 

 young fish are produced sooner, and grow faster than in 

 streams of the forest. I have seen young Trout taken below 

 an artificial pond, near Philadelphia, two inches long, in the 

 latter part of April. 



Fish that spawn in still water generally deposit their ova 

 on plants, which give out sufficient oxygen to promote fecun- 

 dation. 



It is seldom that the young of any fish are taken by the 

 angler during the first summer, as they avoid the waters 

 where he finds his sport, and seek smaller streams, and 

 shallower water, to escape the larger predatory fish ; the fact 

 of their being of the same species as the destroyer, is no pro- 

 tection to the small fry. 



It is unnecessary to go into an account of the mode of pro- 



