TROUT BREEDING. 79 



distance suggesting the fear. This is true; but they may 

 also steal your poultry or your pigs, and what is crime in 

 one case is crime in the other, and there is a penalty for 

 both. " Well, but a fellow who would not rob a pig-pen 

 or a hen roost will rob a fish-pond ; he wouldn't think that 

 so much harm." Wouldn't he! Only keep a sharp lookout 

 after the one as you would after the other, and let the cul- 

 prit take the consequences, and an example of the punish- 

 ment of one fish thief would have a wonderful effect through 

 the neighborhood, and even through the county. 



The question asked by many is, will fish culture pay ? 

 It will certainly pay in stocking barren rivers, as was de- 

 monstrated at Holyoke last summer, when forty millions of 

 young shad were hatched out. But will breeding and 

 raising trout for market pay ? In answering this question, 

 I will give a brief summary of what has been done, and 

 then endeavor to show what can be done. 



A few years since, Seth Green, after seeing what Ste- 

 phen H. Ainsworth was doing, and learning whatever he 

 could from his little fish cultural establishment, bought an 

 old saw-mill site on Caledonia creek, for two thousand 

 dollars The creek abounded in trout, and by erecting 

 divisions, and barriers to their escape in the old forebay and 

 raceway, he soon had an abundant supply of breeding fish. 

 He had scarcely commenced artificial propagation, when a 

 partner was admitted by paying down six thousand dollars 

 for a half interest ; the place, which was bought for two 

 thousand, being valued at twelve thousand. From what I 

 can learn ; his profits in 1866 were about a thousand dollars, 



