84 AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. 



Still, they are like pigs in more respects than in greediness 

 in their disposition to eat offal, for their increase in flesh will 

 be in proportion to the amount of food given. A respect- 

 able old gentleman, who, I think, would not "fib," tells 

 me he has had them of four pounds, when as many years 

 old ; but they had the run of the spring-house, receiving 

 many a spoonful of cream thrown to them in removing 

 moats, much curd, many worms which his boys fed to them, 

 and the whole population of many a big catterpillar's nest 

 cut from a limb in his orchard ; as well as young wasps and 

 hornets. Per contra to this, a trout will live in the bottom 

 of a well, or in a spring, without being fed, for years, and 

 show no growth. In stocking ray ponds in New Jersey, 

 several of my trout received unmistakable marks, which 

 they never got rid of; two of these, which were not over 

 eight or nine inches long, and not over five or six ounces 

 in weight, grew, on the amount of curd already mentioned, 

 to thirteen inches in length before they had been in their 

 adopted home a year. They were very stout, and doubt- 

 less weighed a pound. Here the weight was more than 

 doubled in a year. Mr. Ainsworth stocked a pond near 

 West Bloomfield, New York, with fry as soon as the um- 

 bilical sac was absorbed, and three years after caught them, 

 weighing two pounds. In stocking a pond for angling, on 

 Long Island, a friend of the writer bought yearling trout 

 not over five inches long; the following spring, say in 

 twelve months, they were about eleven inches long, weigh- 

 ing a full half-pound ; in twelve months more, they had 

 giown to average fourteen ounces, some of them weighed 



