3O DOMESTICATED TROUT. 



on frames of the same length as the others, but of two-inch stuff, 

 and as wide as the cloth will permit. These screens must be 

 strong enough to hold two inches of well-washed coarse gravel, 

 from three quarters of an inch to two inches in diameter. They 

 should be so large that there will be interstices between the 

 gravel large enough to let the spawn pass down, if necessary, to 

 the lower screen. The upper screens should have handles on 

 each end to lift them by, as they will have to be taken out and 

 replaced every few days during the spawning season. 



When these two sets of screens are placed the whole length 

 of the race, and all is complete, the water will pass over all, two 

 inches deep at the supply end and fifteen inches deep at the 

 lower end, with a moderate current through the whole race. 

 The reader will perceive by the description and diagram that 

 there is one inch of space between the two screens to hold the 

 spawn as they are deposited by the parent trout, with a gentle 

 current passing over and under them ; and that the upper screen 

 prevents the spawn from being destroyed by trout and insects, 

 so that they are perfectly safe until removed to the hatching 

 box. 



When the trout is ready to spawn, she will enter the race 

 from the pond and prepare her nest. This she does by whip- 

 ping all the sediment from the gravel with her tail, and then she 

 whips or digs a hole in the cleansed gravel about two inches 

 deep, or down to the upper screen, and about four inches in 

 diameter. She then bends herself down in this hole and presses 

 her abdomen on the gravel, and forces out from one hundred to 

 five hundred spawn, which fall to the bottom of the hole and 

 down through the upper screen to the lower one. She then 

 passes up the race, and the male trout attending her comes over 

 the nest and spawn and ejects his milt on the ova ; he then 

 whips. the water in the hole with his tail, sending the water and 

 milt in all directions, so that the milt reaches all the spawn on 

 the screen or in the gravel, and, as they are ripe and ready for 

 the milt, impregnates every one of them. As soon as this is 

 done, the mother trout returns and covers up the spawn and 

 fills the hole, and soon digs another in like manner, and so on 



