158 DOMESTICATED TROUT. 



less it was too violent to begin with, and make the 

 fish come up against it by feeding, which they will 

 do if not sick or too crowded. 



There is a little trick which should be practised on 

 them when they show this tendency to collect too 

 much at the lower screen. It is well known that trout 

 seek the deeper places and darker bottoms of any 

 shallow stream. By taking advantage of this instinct, 

 you can make most of your trout stay where you wish ; 

 so when they collect too far down the trough, fill up 

 the lower end about half an inch or an inch deep 

 for a foot or so from the screen with light-colored 

 sand. This will make the water more shallow here, 

 and the bed of the trough of a lighter shade, and the 

 fish will abandon it at once for deeper and darker 

 places farther up stream. The force of the current 

 is now, of course, increased near the outlet by this 

 change, and an inexperienced person might suppose 

 that if the young fry were collected down near the 

 screen in slow water, they would be carried down 

 much more by swift water. But this is an error. If 

 the fish are not sick, their desire to get out of the 

 shallow, exposed place will make them stem the cur- 

 rent till they find a place above it less objectionable 

 to them. The worst possible thing you can do, if you 

 want to keep the young fry away from the screens, is 

 to make the water slower by deepening it at the 

 screen. It has just the opposite effect from that which 

 is sought. 



For the first two or three weeks after beginning to 

 feed, we are now supposing that the young trout 



