22 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
vided for them. This, however,-is the discouraging side of the 
subject. There is another side to,it which, on thé other hand, is 
quite encouraging, and that is that if you provide properly for 
the fishes at the start, and do give them the care they need, you 
are almost certain to be rewarded by success. It is not a matter 
of vague uncertainty. It is a foregone conclusion that if you 
start right, and give the fishes the correct treatment ex route they 
will go through alive. I wish to emphasize this point, because 
in the transportation of fish, as it has been with the raising of 
young trout and the shipping of ova, there seems to be a vague 
idea inthe minds of many, I might say generally prevalent, that 
the fishes die without a cause, from chance perhaps, or necessity. 
There is no such thing possible. When we take a fish from a 
native habitat and put it into a tank to carry it somewhere, and 
it dies, it does not die by chance or necessity. We have killed 
the fish ourselves, either from ignorance of its needs or from not 
attending to its wants when known. Now if all those who travel 
with living fishes would always bear distinctly in mind this 
truism, which seems almost like a platitude, that every fish that 
dies on the journey dies from an adequate and definite cause, it 
would havea variety of good effects. It would help remove this 
vague notion that the dying of the fishes is a matter of chance, 
it would help clear the minds of fish culturists as to what the 
requirements of traveling with fishes are, and it would make 
them inquire more minutely into the causes of loss in transit, 
and endeavor more intelligently to remove these causes of loss 
before starting off with their precious loads. I go even farther 
than to say that no fish die in the course of their journey with- 
out a distinct cause, and state it as my confirmed opinion that in 
the care of cold-water flshes at least the cause of death can be 
removed, and that almost any species, if not every species of cold- 
water: fish, including both inland and ocean varieties, can be 
transported successfully over long distances in tanks. I know 
this statement will be received with a great deal of skepticism, 
but I thoroughly believe it, and shall feel much surprised when 
the cold-water fish is discovered that cannot be taken a journey 
of several days and nights on the cars. To go back a little to 
what I was saying: when a fish dies in our travelling tanks, since 
