READING 171 



extent trout eggs occasionally meet with wholesale 

 destruction from the same cause. 



But the effect of these agencies taken together 

 is as dust in the balance when weighed against the 

 devastation attributable to various living enemies. 

 'There is not a living creature,' said Mr. Francis 

 Francis, ' which inhabits the waters, which does not 

 prey more or less on trout ova.' Without concurring 

 in this very comprehensive verdict of guilty, I will go 

 as far in that direction as to say, that you will be safe 

 in reversing two popular English law-maxims by 

 assuming that every living inhabitant of the waters is 

 guilty of egg-slaughter until he is proved innocent, 

 and by never giving the accused the benefit of the 

 doubt. It is on this working hypothesis that artificial 

 incubation is conducted, and the trout-breeder who 

 hesitates to exclude animals of every sort and kind 

 from his hatching-boxes is lost. 



The trout themselves are incorrigible rogues in 



O O 



respect to the ova of their own species, which they 

 consume in large quantities. And there is another 

 way in which the trout themselves cause damage. It 

 frequently happens, especially where the spawning- 

 beds are not sufficiently extensive, that a later set of 

 spawning fish come up and play havoc among the 

 eggs by turning up the nests made by the earlier fish. 



