REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF FISH COMMISSIONERS 



23 



months since they were put in, they are fat and have nearly doubled their size. 

 From these I expect to get eggs enough this coming season to give us a start, and in a 

 short time I hope to be able to handle them as successfully as trout. For some unknown 

 reason they do not stand the advance of civilization the same as the trout. As soon as 

 the forests are cleared and the land cultivated, and villages, cities and factories are built 

 along the course of their native streams, they begin to disappear. According to well- 

 authenticated accounts, in .Michigan and other Northwestern States, where there were 

 thousands of them a few years ago, they are now very scarce. In the moun- 

 tainous districts of California there are hundreds of lakes and streams that will 

 remain in natural condition where the Grayling can find a wild state in which, I 

 believe, ihey will thrive as well as they did in their native waters before they were 

 disturbed by the settlement of white men in the country. I would respectfully recom- 

 mend that your honorable Board arrange to secure other shipments of eggs from 



HATCHERY "B," SISSON, CAL. 



Bozeman Station, the same as we received this spring, to hatch and plant in the wilder 

 and more remote parts of the country, until such time as we can raise a stock of our 

 own, which I hope to do before long. 



During the last two year there has been no serious loss from disease among the trout 

 in our ponds. Several times diseases common to trout have broken out among them, 

 but a little treatment always brought them out all right. 



Predatory birds and animals have given us more or less trouble in some of our ponds, 

 but during the last summer we began a systematic work of trapping and hunting them 

 and now we have them thinned out to such an extent that as soon as one shows up we 

 discover it and at once arrange our traps, and in a day or two we have the animal or 

 bird (whatever it happens to be) captured and killed. 



Following is a list of animals and birds shot and trapped on the hatchery grounds 

 during the spring and summer of 1906: 10 fish eagles, 8 minks, 2 bitterns, 2 hawks, 3 

 raccoons, 76 kingfishers, 7 skunks, 3 herons, 4 cats, 6 shrews, 8 merganser or fish ducks, 

 2 mudhens, 2 divers, 3 sandpipers, 3 ouzels, 2 owls. 



