4 TROUT CULTURE. 



breeder may possess. In the former case there is a 

 stickfast tendency, if not a deterioration, for an inju- 

 dicious mating is certain to yield bad results ; in the 

 second, improvement is a certainty, sooner or later. 

 All such improvements, however, require great care, 

 skill, patience, and time. 



Our great breeds of domesticated animals, of which 

 this country may justly feel proud, seeing that they 

 are eagerly sought by foreign buyers whenever offered 

 for sale were not built up in a generation ; nor will 

 our fisheries revive, unless all, great and small, " put 

 their shoulders to the wheel," and get them out of the 

 deep rut into which, by mislegislation, or one-sided 

 action, they have unfortunately fallen. Mismanage- 

 ment tells its own tale on sea, lake, and river. 



Now we come to the question of importing foreign 

 and, for the most part, predacious fishes. This topic 

 is a sort of craze or mania with some people. The 

 Black Bass, the Wels (Silurus Glanus), and others of 

 the same feeding habits, have their advocates ; men 

 who espouse the cause of their proteges through thick 

 and thin, who pay little attention, as is the wont of 

 partisans, to anything said on the other side of such 

 a question. 



What do we want with these voracious fishes? 

 Have we not our Esox Lucius, pike of our waters, 

 masealonge of our American cousins? Is he not 

 depredator enough for all practical purposes, aided 

 by the Perch (Perca Fluviatilis)? Will any sane man 

 tell us that it would be safe to largely import the 

 Wels, growing as it does to an enormous size ? Is it 

 consistent with reason that a fish, purely carnivorous, 

 can attain a weight, as well as maintain it, of over one. 



