ca 



to grow, would reforest a hundred acres. The eggs from one 

 pike perch (wall-eyed pike), were they all to hatch and grow 

 up to be five-pound fish, would produce three hundred tons of 

 pike. There are dozens of kinds of fish in Minnesota waters. 

 All are prolific in the matter of eggs, from the bass and crop- 

 pie, with an average of perhaps 2,000, to the brook trout with 

 20,000, and the pike perch with 120,000 or more eggs a year 

 for each full-grown female. As with the pine seed, so with 

 the fish-spawn. Nature's methods are lavish but wasteful. 

 Of the hundreds of millions of pine seeds produced each year, 

 only a few millions survive the fires and insects and rodents, 

 and are destined to become trees. Of the billions of eggs 

 laid by our game and food fishes, probably less than one per 

 cent even hatch. The trained forester can so regulate lumber- 

 ing that one crop of pine or spruce will follow another, even 

 without artificial planting. The fish culturist in like manner 

 n, by the adoption of proper methods, increase fish produc- 

 on not merely fifty or one hundred per cent, but in some 

 ases several thousand per cent. In other words, only a few 

 hundred young fish on an -average hatch out under natural 

 conditions from one hundred thousand eggs. Experts in 

 charge of hatcheries have actually been able to produce as 

 many as ninety-eight thousand young fish from one hundred 

 thousand fish eggs. Is this not suggestive. There are places 

 without number for the easy and cheap collection of spawn. 

 Rough, inexpensive buildings, put at some of the best points 

 and used only during the time when hatching operations 

 should be under way, seem to be much more profitable than 

 the costly plants usually constituting "fish hatcheries" in 

 most of the states. It is noticed that in Manitoba, where 

 white fish are propagated by the million, the hatcheries look 

 as if they might cost only a few hundred dollars each, 'but they 

 are located where they do the business. 



The fishing industry of Minnesota amounts to several mil- 

 lions of dollars a year. This can easily be trebled and quadru- 

 pled through propagation of the more important species. So 

 far we have three hatcheries, none of them close to important 

 commercial fisheries. They are well worth maintaining, how- 

 ever, and splendid work has been done at these hatcheries. 



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