8 



away, and that it is utterly useless to hatch fish and put them in 

 waters unless we know to a certainty that the food for the young 

 fry is there. I made still another experiment in the same line by 

 going into one of the neighboring lakes near by in Wisconsin, and 

 taking a large amount of the spawn of the wall-eyed pike. 1 

 brought those down and hatched millions of them and put them 

 into Lake Geneva, and there never has been a wall-eyed pike seen 

 there. Evidently there is nothing for those young fish to live upon. 

 They breed and live and thrive where all the conditions are right 

 for them, or in trout lakes where they are indigenous, and there is 

 something for the young fish to live upon. Yon may take the fry 

 and put them into water where there is no food for the young fish, 

 and you will never have any result. This is a thing we might as 

 well look in the face and understand that it is useless work. Now, 

 see the work of the Iowa Commission, and they did a great deal ; 

 they took a great deal of spawn, salmon trout, I don't know where 

 they deposited them— all over Iowa — but I have yet to learn that 

 one has appeared. The same way I did with white fish. I took 

 about an equal number of white fish as lake trout, taking the 

 spawn the same time of year and hatched about as many. I sup- 

 pose I put into Lake Geneva 2,500,000 both of white fish and lake 

 trout. I was determined to make the experiment thorough enough 

 to demonstrate that one question, whether these small lakes could 

 be stocked with the better classes of food fishes where they were not 

 indigenous to the waters. I knew that of course by putting a few 

 thousand in a lake occasionally, or every year, five to ten or twenty - 

 thousand was not enough to demonstrate it. They could easily be 

 destroyed ; but by putting enough in, piling them in year after year, 

 it would demonstrate it, and I spent ten or twelve thousand dol- 

 lars in the experiment. I think this is a question that is very vital 

 for us to consider in our work hereafter — what there is in the waters 

 where we propose to put fish for the young to live upon, and I ap- 

 prehend there is not much to be gained in trying to plant fish in 

 waters where they are not indigenous, or where they have not been 

 some time. 



"I also procured from Prof. Baird and hatched perhaps half a 

 million of California salmon the same seasons that I was hatching 

 the others, which I deposited in the lake ; but there is a little 

 stream entering Lake Geneva — the lake is fed by springs. There is- 

 really no inlet to it except the springs around it, but at the upper 

 end of the lake there is about a mile of low land, and the springs 

 running down through make a little creek, i deposited the young 

 California salmon in those little streams — little springs — and they 

 ran down into this creek. Some of them I kept — perhaps fifty to one 

 hundred thousand. About half of the amount I hatched I kept from 

 the streams until they were yearlings and then turned them out, 

 and we have taken occasionally a California salmon, but they are 

 not at all plenty. For the last two years there has not been any 

 taken. Three years ago a boy took one, a very fine fish which 

 weighed twelve and three-quarter pounds, as handsome a salmon as 

 I ever saw anywhere, showing that salt doesn't enter into the ques- 

 tion at all as to the life of a salmon ; that they will grow just as 

 well in fresh water as in salt if thev have enough to eat. 



