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Mr. Mather then finished the reading of the letter. 
Mr. MatHer—There were several things I desired to say, 
but I will leave them until after we hear Mr. Clark. 
Mr. CrarK—In the discussion of this question, I hope 
one thing will not be done—don’t let us be too personal. 
This is a question, as I said last year and two years ago, 
that I consider vital to fishculture, the question of plant- 
ing fish right. That to-day, in my mind, is all there is to 
Iearn in fishculture. The matter of getting eggs and 
hatching them is a thing that is just as simple in practice 
as the manufacture of skirts. 
Our worthy President to-day touched upon a subject 
that is very important, the question of the food of the 
fishes. It is one of the very important questions. The 
planting of fish, not only in the right place where the food 
is, but the question of planting as near as you can the 
right kind of fish for the water, is equally important. 
The writer of the letter which Mr. Mather has just read 
states that their Commission cannot raise yearlings, but 
he also tells us what they are doing in that line. They 
have their nursery where they keep them until a year old, 
and then let them run into streams; and that is what I 
have been advocating for a number of years. We raise 
them at our hatcheries because we have to do it. If it 
were possible to do it in every instance, and you had a 
nursery at the head of every stream you stock, it would 
be better to have it right there. We have one instance of 
this kind of work in Michigan, where they have com- 
menced just such an enterprise, and Commissioners Post 
and Whitaker have visited it, and know that what I say is 
the fact. They have a little nursery, and they propose to 
plant their fry there where they feed upon natural food. 
This is just what I have been advocating all along—protect 
your fry. I don’t mean to hatch five million trout fry in 
this way, because it is impossible to do it unless you have 
lotsof money. At Northville we handle four million trout 
