104 Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting. 
is perceptible; an examination of the water in various places in 
that stream fails to show the presence of any of the minuter 
forms of animal and plant life, such as the small crustaceans, 
protozoans and algee upon which the young trout would have to 
feed at that time of the year. The leachings of the logs and 
the presence of bark and fragments from those logs and saw-dust 
in the stream covering up certain portions of the bed, are alone 
sufficient, so far as I could detect, to kill out all the food upon 
which the young fish would first feed. 
While it would affect fatally the young fish of that stream 
and similar streams, I cannot but believe that it would affect the 
adult fish also, and that brings us to this point then, that a para- 
site, like the gill parasite, which under normal conditions, in the 
streams of the west which are usually not so seriously polluted, 
would not be a serious thing; yet for the fish in those streams 
where the conditions are not as favorable as formerly, and the fish 
cannot resist the attacks of that parasite, the disease spreads with 
startling fatality. 
All of which goes to show that in considering these questions 
many factors have to be taken into consideration. It is not a 
simple proposition, it is not a simple easy problem. There are 
hundreds of factors which must be considered. We cannot say 
the suckers are killing the trout, or the carp of Lake Erie are 
killing out the white fish, (which is not true, as investigation 
shows), but many different factors will have to be considered. 
Now as to the suckers, I would not be surprised if they 
might do some harm to the spawning beds of the trout. But 
ordinarily is not this true: that in the streams in the east 
where the brook trout spawns, the suckers will not be in those 
portions of the streams where the trout spawn at the spawning 
time, or until the lapse of some weeks or months after the trout 
have spawned? Will not the suckers be found in those portions 
of the streams, if at all, later in the spring and early fall, long 
after the trout have spawned, and most likely after the eggs have 
all hatched ? 
Take the instance cited by Mr. Peabody, where suckers were 
found in large numbers, in a certain stream, and trout found 
abundantly under the banks of that same stream; he did not 
state the time of year, but I imagine it must have been im the 
