2 
American Fisheries Society. 16) 
but I believe we over-estimate rather than under-estimate. When 
they put up ten or fifteen cans with a thousand of those tittle 
fish in, they do not know which one of these cans will be taken 
out and counted. They have been taken out at least once a week 
and frequently oftener, and counted. I counted a can myself 
this summer, and there were over 1,300 fish in it. I ordered 
the men to be careful not to over-estimate, and very seldom do 
they run under 1,000. 
Mr. Seymour Bower: This question of the size of bass seems 
to resolve itself into whether it is better to plant 50,000 an inch 
long, or an inch and a half, or 2,000 or 3,000 about two inches 

long 
plant the larger number. When the bass have reached a certain 
3,000 or 4,000 perhaps. It seems to me it is better to 
age and average one to two inches in length, they either require 
a different kind of food, another type of food that the ordinary 
pond does not furnish, or else they have exhausted the daphnia 
and small crustacean life they subsist on from the begimning. 
The ordinary pond does not furnish the larger type of food, 
hence it is not profitable to carry them longer, as they commence 
to prey on one another. It is the only food they have. 
Mr. Titcomb: This question has been brought up in such a 
way that perhaps I ought to say what the policy of the bureau of 
fishery is with reference to the distribution of the black bass. It 
is necessary to consider it in all its phases. Now, today, we do 
so, and since the last meeting—in fact before the last meeting— 
we began distributing the black bass when they were very young, 
so far as possible. We have these stations scattered over the dif- 
ferent parts of the country, and we have applicants still more 
widely scattered. Some of these applicants can be supplied by 
sending messengers in baggage cars with cans of fish; others 
can only be economically supplied by sending the bass along with 
other species of fish in carload lots for a thousand miles or two 
thousand miles even. ‘Therefore we cannot set a time or regu- 
late the time of distribution exactly by the size of the fish. Tf it 
were possible for the Bureau of Fisheries to distribute the bass 
from all its stations at the time considered by it most suitable, it 
would distribute when they are the size mentioned by Mr. Clark. 
We would begin distributing even when the bass is only ten days 
