INTRODUCTION. 5 



I do not wish to be understood, however, in saying 

 that following certain rules will insure success, that a 

 mechanical adherence to rules will make any one 

 succeed. On the contrary, to raise trout successfully 

 demands a vast deal more than that. It requires not 

 only the ordinary force, foresight, and tenacity of pur- 

 pose requisite to success in any business, but also, in 

 an unusual degree, constant vigilance and caution, and 

 that peculiar blending of insight, skill, and precision 

 which makes a successful sportsman, and which seems 

 to be a gift, rather than an acquirement. 



I do not say that without these qualities a degree of 

 success may not be obtained, but for the best success 

 these traits are indispensable. 



You can see at once why this is so. In the first 

 place, the trout breeder has to deal with the most 

 elusory, the most treacherous and capricious thing in 

 the world, namely, running water. To make running 

 water go as you would have it and where you would 

 have it, from one year's end to another, through all 

 the vicissitudes of weather of the four seasons, in- 

 cluding the extremes of frost and heat, freshet and 

 drought, is a task the difficulty of which only those 

 know who have tried it. Then it must be remem- 

 bered that your charge is a wild creature, which has 

 never been domesticated or taught domestic habits, and 

 every one knows the vast difference in the difficulty 

 of the work between the rearing of wild and domesti- 

 cated creatures. 



Furthermore, the trout lives in an element not yours, 

 but foreign to you, and one which you can never by any 



