Trout Breeding. 39 



equal of any other trout for the table. I like an occa- 

 sional breakfast of calve's liver and bacon, and why is 

 not good, tender beef liver as good for a trout ? Why is 

 not a diet of liver as good as worms, snails, bugs, cater- 

 pillars, mice and small trout? This, as I have said, is 

 sentiment, pure and simple. It is the romance that the 

 angler weaves about his beautiful fish which he traveled 

 miles for and worked hard to get after he got there. 

 Divested of this sentiment there would be no fancy 

 prices for brook trout. It would take its place in the 

 markets with other food fishes and would drop behind 

 some of them. As an angler's fish it is a noble one, and 

 it is one of the best of fresh water fishes for the table, 

 if it is not muddy. 



When a boy the perch, bullheads and suckers from the 

 mill pond seemed to be the best of fishes, and I did not 

 understand why some people turned up their noses at 

 them and preferred the fish of salt water. That knowl- 

 edge came later, and outside of the whitefish of the great 

 lakes, and its relatives, there is no fresh water fish that 

 I care to buy more than once a year. "If this be trea- 

 son, make the most of it." 



In camp I declare that the brook trout just now fried 

 with salt pork, or roasted before the fire, are the finest 

 fish that ever went down my oesophagus, but when I 

 am only half hungry in a New York cafe there is a 

 change of opinion. 



Yet, after writing this, there is a remembrance of 

 camp life that crops up "like the faint, exquisite music 

 of a dream," and a memory of trout fried in bear fat is 

 enjoyed for a moment and is followed by the greatest 

 treat of my life as memory harks back to some plump 

 trout cooked in beaver fat with a beaver's tail frying 

 among them. That was a dish to be remembered, and 



