Trdut Breeding. 117 



could be seen, and when drawn down as low as pos- 

 sible they naturally gathered in the pit, where they 

 were dipped into tubs of clean water by a man in rub- 

 ber boots. While in the pit they began to show signs 

 of distress by keeping their noses out of the water, and 

 the man who was dipping them said : "It smells like 

 gunpowder." Then another idea, not original, dawned : 

 the fish were being asphyxiated by the foul gas or sul- 

 phureted hydrogen ! 



The sluice at the inlet was opened, but too late. Out 

 of the 2,500 fine breeding fish, only 39 were saved ; 

 they died even after being placed in fresh water while 

 still breathing, and an expensive lesson in the dear 

 school of experience was learned. I had seen the 

 Southern darkies muddy ponds when collecting speci- 

 mens for me, and knew that this gas, which lies at the 

 bottom of all waters in which there is anything to de- 

 cay, was a deadly poison if stirred, but the thought 

 never occurred that the fish would do their own "mud- 

 dying," as the darkies called it. 



This experiment shows another fact : fish which feel 

 secure in from three to four feet of water, and show 

 no alarm at persons walking at the edge of the pond, 

 and which will come readily to the surface to feed in 

 your presence, or even take it from your hand, will, in 

 water of not over a foot in depth, be as timid as wild 

 fish just taken from the brook. Their sense of secur- 

 ity is gone ; hence it is better to take them with a net 

 large enough to sweep the pond. It also shows what a 

 little oversight or false reckoning may do toward sweep- 

 ing away the results of expenditure and labor. In fact 

 there is none among our domestic animals more diffi- 

 cult to manage, for the beginner, than trout, if they may 

 be allowed to be domesticated; and their tendency to 



