FOR PLEASURE AND PROFIT. 93 



Beauty and seeming suitability to our waters. Had they 

 tested the matter thoroughly all would have been well, for, 

 without doubt, certain British waters would profit by their in- 

 troduction. But they were distributed over the country, 

 utterly regardless of whether or not the water in which they 

 were planted was suited to their welfare. The inevitable 

 result followed. Taken all in all, they did more harm than 

 good, and in the end were voted a failure, notwithstanding 

 the strenuous efforts of a few prominent fish-culturists who 

 knew their value under proper conditions. 



Now, as a matter of fact, Fontinalis delights in clear, cold 

 mountain streams and lakes of low temperature. A water 

 that warms up to anything much over GOdeg. means the deci- 

 mation of a stock of Fontinalis, if not, indeed, their total 

 destruction. In their native country they leave the streams 

 in hot weather and seek shelter in deep parts of the lakes ; and 

 they only thrive where these lakes are available, or, of course, 

 where the mountain streams do not warm up. With these 

 facts before us we can account for the failure of their at- 

 tempted introduction into the bulk of British waters where 

 they were planted. They might have done well in some of 

 our mountain streams and lakes, but they were planted in 

 wrong positions to begin with; they were a failure in those 

 positions. This failure gave them a bad name, and, with very 

 few exceptions, British fishery owners will have nothing to do 

 with them now. 



I do not think our fisheries lost much by this failure, and 

 certainly our fishery-owners, and not a few fish-culturists, 

 learned a lesson in stocking that has stood them in good stead 

 since. The pity of it is that a creditable carefulness has in 

 some cases degenerated into extreme prejudice against the in- 

 troduction of any foreign fish whatsoever, with the result that 

 at one time we were very near condemning rainbow trout, 

 whereas time has proved that caution only is necessary. 



But before I proceed to discuss why and where I think rain- 

 bows should be introduced, I would express the emphatic 

 opinion that wherever brown trout will thrive, they 



