98 Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting. 
being caught and that the larger fish are seriously infected with a 
parasite, mostly the gill parasite. In other words, we are getting 
fewer brook trout from our Adirondack lakes than ever before, 
and many of those caught are infected. 
But the most serious thing in this whole situation to us in 
New York state is the fact that we can no longer carry any brood 
fish at our hatcheries. | We cannot carry safely a single brook 
trout over 15 months old in a New York fish hatchery. Now 
you know what that means. We used to get millions of eggs 
every year from Cold Spring Harbor hatchery, whereas now we 
get none. The same condition exists at Caledonia where we 
have the outpouring of an underground river, the year round, 
with a temperature less than 50 degrees; and yet you cannot keep 
a single stock brood trout in that water. The Adirondack 
lakes on the west side are beyond any idea, infected with this 
parasitic life. That is the situation confronting us; and when 
I said I had serious reasons for beheving that other states are 
liable to be in the same predicament, I meant what I said. f 
have told the honest truth about our state in the hope that other 
states will lend a hand and help stop this thing. It is all very 
well to say you do not haye parasites, or you do not have the same 
thing, or it does not exist to the same extent. I will not attempt 
to refute such statements; but I know that parasites do exist 
in other states beside ours, and the time is going to come when 
somebody else will have to stand up before the society, confess, 
and ask for help, just as T am doing now. 
Dr. Gorham: I suppose you find them more or less every- 
where ? 
Mr. Whish: Not to that extent. They are increasing, and 
nothing is known to science to stop the disease. That problem 
is not being studied. The scientists are engaged in furnishing 
a better nomenclature for fishes instead of a cure for the parasitic 
diseases. 
Mr. Titcomb: Do your refer to Lake Clear alone as being 
infected, or the general chain of lakes ? 
Mr. Whish: I mean the entire chain. 
(). How long have these parasites existed there ? 
