ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 21 
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game qualities, they certainly are one of our gamest fish known, 
and are quicker than our Eastern brook trout, requiring all your 
attention after they take fly ; but I have been told by a gentle- 
man who has taken in our Eastern waters rainbow trout which 
weighed a pound each, that he thought after their first two or 
three rushes they tired out quicker than our native trout. As to 
their rapid growth it must be conceded that they grow faster 
than our native brook trout. 
Are they a hardy fish? Yes. Decidedly so. A person has 
no trouble in raising them ; they don’t refuse food, pine away 
and die as many of the brook trout will do in confinement, but 
they will eat often and in great quanties, and will sometimes 
take a bite out of their neighbor, as a pond of them will show to 
be a fact, by many marks, scars, loss of part of a fin, etc. Adapta- 
bility to waters that will hardly support our brook trout is the 
best thing, I think, that can be said of them, for if such waters 
are stocked with them, we will have them in their proper place, 
and their mission will be fulfilled, and people in general will 
then consider them a great acquisition. 
What I consider all wrong is that they are turned into good 
trout streams before the results can be told. We would not 
consider it any advantage if bass or pickerel were put into that 
good trout stream or pond. We have an endless number of 
streams, lakes and ponds in which they would doubtless thrive. 
I don’t consider that it would be to the advantage of the brook 
trout if the mountain trout were introduced into the same 
stream ; certainly not if it is true that the hardier drive out the 
weaker. 
Let me suppose a case. Mr. Blank has a splendid trout 
stream, say on Long Island; there are plenty of brook trout in 
it, and it is no trouble on any favorable day for him to make a 
good catch. He takes it into his head that he will put into this 
stream the rainbow trout, and carries out his plans. After a 
year or two he begins catching the new comers, of good fair 
size, and he is astonished to see how they have grown. He has 
lots of fun with them, they are so very gamey ; but if the weather 
is at all warm, he will find on arrival home that the new fish are 
beginning to be quite soft, while the native fish are hard. What 
