American Fisheries Society. 105 
summer or early autumn, when you would expect to find suckers 
running far up the streams. 
Mr. Titcomb: ‘The doctor is mistaken about the suckers. 
You do find them on the spawning beds. Suckers seem intui- 
tively to find spawning beds and follow them up in lakes, 
Dr. Evermann: That is true of lakes, but I was speaking of 
streams. 
Mr. Titcomb: When I spoke about the sucker and asked 
whether it was a disadvantage or not, | was well aware that some 
say the sucker is a destroyer of spawn; but it is a benefit perhaps 
in another way. Many birds called birds of prey are really use- 
ful in this country, and possibly the sucker has its use and 
furnishes a lot of little fish for food for the larger trout, and 
perhaps as scavengers has another use. Perhaps we should 
hesitate to condemn the sucker in trout ponds before the question 
is thoroughly investigated. ’ 
Mr. Clark: One thought I would like to offer in connection 
with Mr. Whish’s paper on the diseases of the parent fish. Have 
you not in your pond fish which are being kept for the collection 
of eggs? 
Mr. Whish: We have not any longer, Mr. Clark. 
Mr. Clark: JI think there are a few. 
Mr. Whish: ‘There is not a single stock brood trout in the 
hatcheries of the state of New York. 
Mr. Clark: I mean throughout the country. We have all 
got to get back to nature. Your cement ponds and paraphernalia 
in my judgment you do not want at all. Get back to nature 
as nearly as possible and keep your fish in such quantities as to 
do the work. We have one “wild” pond at the Northville station, 
where the brook trout are doing well, and by the side of them, 
in cement ponds fry died rapidly. Now if those fry could have 
been put in the natural pond, | have an idea they would have 
lived. The fish we have there that are two years old were put 
in as fry, and are as handsome two year olds as I ever saw. It 
is as near a natural pond as can be made under the conditions. 
