154 Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt Water. 



brown trout in our streams because they grow too fast 

 and might eventually kill out our native fish. To this 

 I say : "Let 'em do it if they can, and the 'fittest' will 

 survive;" but they can't do it. The chubs, dace, pike, 

 bass and other fishes have worked this game for cen- 

 turies before a white angler wet a line in an American 

 trout stream, and here we are! A trout is a cannibal 

 when he gets to be three years old, whether he is a na- 

 tive American or an adopted citizen, and it is only a 

 question of which fish matures in the shortest time for 

 the angler. 



A Rochester paper said : "A brown trout was taken 

 in the spring brook below the Caledonia hatchery on 

 June i, 1891, by F. P. Brownell, which weighed eleven 

 pounds, and as the first importation was made in 1883, 

 by Colonel Fred Mather, it could not have been over 

 eight years old, at most. Brownell would say nothing 

 of the mode of capture, and offered to sell it for two 

 dollars. Failing to sell it, he took it home, and was 

 preparing to cook it when Mr. Annin dropped in and 

 saw it. Commissioner W. H. Bowman has said that 

 he would have given ten dollars for it to send to Wash- 

 ington to have a plaster cast made of it, and other men 

 would have been glad to purchase it for scientific pur- 

 poses; but it is fortunate that Mr. Annin saw, identi- 

 fied and weighed the fish. Brown trout have been 

 taken in England weighing as much as eighteen pounds, 

 but this one is the largest on record in America at pres- 

 ent writing." 



The so-called Loch-Leven trout of Scotland are the 

 brown trout, which differ slightly in color in their na- 

 tive waters, but show no differences when hatched in 

 America. Sir James Ramsay Gibson Maitland, Bart., 

 sent many eggs from his great fish breeding establish- 



