TROUT BREEDING. 57 



wards be made by using the soft side of a stout feather. 

 A nest fourteen inches wide and eighteen inches long, will 

 suffice for four thousand eggs without their lying on top 

 of each other. When the strip used for the temporary 

 damming of the water is removed, it should be done gradu- 

 ally, that the eggs may not be disturbed, as they would be 

 if it was lifted suddenly. The eggs first placed in a trough, 

 should be in the lower nest, and then in each successive 

 nest towards the head, so that the fry below, hatching out 

 before those above, can have access to the nursery, when 

 old enough, without passing over and disturbing the un- 

 hatched ova, or the young fish that have not absorbed the 

 umbilical sac. 



A trout, the second autumn, when twenty-one or twenty- 

 two months old, will give from two hundred to three hun- 

 dred eggs. The third autumn, from four to six hundred. 

 The fourth, from a thousand to twelve hundred. The fifth, 

 from two to three thousand, according to its size. 



The fish culturist will not be able to procure all the eggs 

 that his spawners have, for his hatching- troughs. A good 

 portion of the ova will be deposited at night, or between 

 the times of driving them into the trap. Much of it will 

 be devoured as soon as it is emitted, or will be thrown out 

 by repeated nest-making on the same bed of gravel, and 

 then eaten by the fish. Notwithstanding all this, he will 

 find through the winter a goodly number of young fish in 

 his raceway and at the heads of his ponds, that have come 

 from eggs which have escaped these dangers. It would, 

 therefore, be as well to exclude the fish from the raceways 



