American Fisheries Society. 1k 
not wide enough, and he experimented with one and took out the 
sides, extended the flow of the water so that it covered a width 
of probably 60 feet, and put 10,009 marketable trout in there. 
In less than two weeks every one of them were dead. Now that 
bears out the theory of the importance of a rapid flow of water. 
That is all I think there is to it down there, with the excep- 
tion that everything is in a wild state. The head of the spring 
itself, which is very like the one at White Sulphur, is a single 
spring. They did come very near spoiling it. They thought 
they would build a big pond, so they raised the dam and over- 
flowed the spring three feet. But they did not keep it up very 
long; they knocked down the bulkhead and let the water run 
naturally. They have a flow of nearly a mile where they raise 
this immense quantity of trout. All their ponds are full, and 
they have hundreds of thousands of fry, which grow very rapidly. 
Mr. Titeomb, Mr. Clark, and Mr. Ravenel have seen those, and 
they saw no fungus, and no disease of any kind on the fish. 
They market a great many millions of eggs every year. 
There is no question about it. Now I do not know why they 
should be more successful than others in the west; but I can say 
this about the state of Rhode Island, and about the state of 
nature. We are decidedly returning to a state of nature. Our 
sawmills are all gone, the country is growing up back in the 
rural districts, to brush; the streams are covered with brush so 
that it is almost impossible to get a line into them in places, but 
they are full of trout. I have seen 60 to 70 fishermen start out 
in the morning and at night every one of them return home with 
a basket of trout. They are getting big trout all the while. 
There is no trouble about it at all. Our streams there in some 
places run deep, and in some places shallow, and have consider- 
able flow of water in them; and there the trout grow much larger 
and better than elsewhere. That I think can be traced right 
back to the return to nature; because the banks of our streams 
are covered with brush, and the woods are still there. We cut 
off the woods 30 or 40 years ago, but they have grown up again. 
We have no trouble with mills and pollution. If they want to 
cut down a pine forest they do not put a portable saw mill on 
the banks of the stream, or they would be arrested. ‘They must 
put it back away from the water. 
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