went to work. The first year I bought the eggs from the New York 

 State Commission, 200,000, and aftir that Mr. Welcher went every 

 fall to Lake Michigan and took the supply of eggs. 1 have laid in 

 about 590,000 each winter, and I pursued that faithfully and put 

 in about 500,000 good healthy fry in the lake every spring for five 

 years, but I have never seen, and no one else, as nuar as I can 

 find out, has ever seen the shadow or sign of a salmon trout in 

 Lake Geneva, large or small. The question is asked, where are 

 they? Well, they are not there. Mr. Green said: "They are 

 there but you do not know how to fish for them. They are in deep 

 water." "Well," I said, "you come out and spend another week 

 with me and we will fish for them." He said he was not able to 

 come, but replied, "I will send my son out." I offered to pay all 

 his expenses and his son came out. I think that was two years 

 ago, and he spent a week with me and we spent the weelc fisbing 

 faithfully in the deep water with Mr. Green's methods, with a 

 heavy sinker and leaders, and we fished the lake thoroughly, and 

 Mr. Welcher came down with some gill nets; that was three years 

 ago-. We set gill nets across the lake in four or five different places 

 and followed that up for a week, and we never took or saw one 

 sign of a salmon trout. Now, the reason of it is this, and that is 

 the reason I call the attention of you gentlemen to it. It is a sul)- 

 ject we have got to look at fairly, and it is the main thifig in 

 planting fish, and that is, what food is there in the waters where 

 you propose to plant the fish for the young fish or fry? Salmon 

 trout would live in Lake Geneva if they could come to maturity. 

 The Cisco is there in great abundance and furnish a most excellent 

 and natural food — the fish that they lue on in Lake Michigan ; but 

 in looking at it I was satisfied that all the young fish died. The 

 fry starved to death because their food was not there. 



"Now, in looking at it you will see what the trouble is. The sal- 

 mon trout breed in the great lakes wherever there is a reef, and 

 there you catch them in three, four or five hundred feet of water, 

 or less ; wherever there are extensive reefs of rock, there the gill nets 

 are set and there the salmon trout are taken. Here are the Eacine 

 reefs ; you sail over those reefs any time in the summer and 

 throw out a trolling line and you will take salmon trout. My 

 theory of it is that on the face of that rock there is some animal 

 life, animalculae, that the young fish stick their noses in and feed 

 on until they are old enough to eat other fish. Lake Geneva has 

 no reefs of rock. Where there are stones at all it is a boulder bot- 

 tom, or it is a mud bottom, earth and clay covered largely with 

 leaves. It is surrounded to a great extent with timber and tlie 

 leaves blow in every year. You try it and you will find on the 

 bottom of Lake Geneva simply a layer of dead leaves, so there is 

 evidently nothing there for the young fry to feed upon and the fry 

 have all died, and that has ))een the ease in hundreds of other in- 

 stances. I have sent them to Crystal Lake. Mr. Dole, who lives 

 there, is a friend of mine, and I have sent several hundred thou- 

 sands for two or three years. I always gave him a lot to put in 

 there. That is a small deep lake of perhaps three or four thou- 

 sand acre?, very pure water and very- clear, but there ne^'^r has 

 Jbeen a young fish seen, and 1 think it is money and work thrown 



