American Fisheries Society. 1 
ing to get together before this report was made. We had talked 
it over a little, and there are some good reasons why the classi- 
fication as he has given it to you, is all right, and there are 
some objections to it. Bass of the same age vary so in size that 
it seems to me that it is better to classify them according to 
size rather than age. A late hatched 30 day fish, where the water 
is warm, may be twice as large as one hatched early and a good 
deal older under different temperature and food conditions. It 
is a rather confusing matter, and I would like to hear from the 
other members of the society on this point. 
President: This is a matter that ought to be settled. Of 
course we are all interested when we are asking the government 
for fish to know what to order, and what we may expect to get, 
and if we could settle the question here and get it into our 
minutes, we would be all right on that question, and I would 
like to hear from Mr. Titcomb on that point. He is in direct 
communication with the supply department, and perhaps could 
suggest some standard. 
Mr. Titcomb: We distribute from the Bureau of Fisheries 
fry, fingerlings, and yearlings, so-called. We have never used 
the term baby fingerlings, and when we speak of a fingerling 
it may be a fish three months old, or it may be six months old. 
Of course there is a great variation in size of different species 
of the same age; and fingerling bass would be very much smaller 
than fingerling trout, perhaps. The fish have been desig- 
nated as yearlings after they are six months old, you might say, 
although they are not nearly a year old, and that term has been 
applied quite as much to size as to actual age. 
Now, so far as I understand the question, it is not what 
the applicant is going to get. We do not tell them whether we 
are going to give them fry or baby-fingerlings or yearlings. 
We have to be guided in that by the convenience of the bureau 
in making the distributions. We can distribute to some states 
in the spring of the year, and to others early in the fall; and 
so some are more fortunate than others. In some places we 
make two distributions. But it occurred to me that if we could 
designate fish as fry, and then afterwards as number 1, 2, 3 
and 4, ete., for the number of months they have been fed after 
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