140 American Fisheries Society. 



Mr. Adams: An interesting experiment was made at one of our 

 hatcheries this summer with the small mouth black bass which were 

 somewhere between half and three-quarters of an inch long. These 

 were bass fry that were sent out to one of our ponds; the superintendent 

 of the hatchery took several hundred of them for the purpose of his 

 experiment. He put them in a regular rearing pool and fed them with 

 the ordinary stuff that would be fed to brook trout fingerlings say two 

 inches long. The bass, however, gradually died off, the experiment 

 never produced any green fish or any that were advanced in size. But 

 it was rather interesting to see these little bass feed : they would go 

 right down and, almost standing on their heads, would eat off the bottom. 

 It was observed that the bass would go down and take the stuff off the 

 bottom and feed on it, where the brook trout wanted it in the water 

 where they could grab it. It seems to me that in this bass cultural work 

 the question is to discover some food that you can feed to the small 

 bass — I am talking now about small mouth black bass — that will 

 supplement the natural food. I do not know how it is going to be done 

 or whether we shall ever be able to do it, but it is the eternal struggle of 

 trying to maintain enough animal life of the kinds that we have been 

 working with in the past in our bass ponds, reducing what would seem to 

 be the number of fish that ought to be raised in a bass pond, with inten- 

 sive cultivation. The present foods will have to be supplemented, it 

 seems to me, by something else if we are going to carry on this work on 

 a big scale. 



Mr. Hare: Mr. Culler brought out a point that is far more impor- 

 tant than might be imagined, and that is that you want to give your 

 young trout something to do; you want to set them to work. There is a 

 limple way of doing that. I do not claim any credit for it; it is not my 

 own idea; I did not originate it. But in our troughs at the Manchester 

 station we use what we call division dams. The division dam is noth- 

 ing more than a piece of sheet metal across the trough; the water cannot 

 flow over the top of this dam but does flow underneath, and in that 

 way we have a strong current at three or four different positions in the 

 troughs, and you will always find the young trout right in next to this 

 division dam. They are always working against that current, which is 

 perfectly natural for the trout, and that has a great deal to do with 

 keeping them in a healthy condition. I just wanted to emphasize that 

 point brought out by Mr, Culler; it is really important. 



Mr. Culler: I can tell you where that idea came from: it is one of 

 Mr. Seagle's inventions. 



Mr. Hare: He deserves great credit for it. It has worked wonders 

 for me. 



Mr. Culler: About 1905, under Mr. Titcomb's direction, Mr. Seagle 

 conducted a series of experiments in connnection with which we tried 

 all the different kinds of food that were know'n at that time. In addi- 

 tion, we tried an aquatic bug from Mexico — cooked, ground up and 

 dried. We tried azotine and meal, and liver and meal. 



