9 



"There is an abnridance of food there, and the California salmon 

 are a very hardy fish. I have no doubt if I hid pat as many Cal- 

 ifornia salmon into Lake Geneva as I did salmon trout, we 

 would have had more of a result from it, still I don't apprehend 

 that they would do much. I think in a lake of that size and 

 purity of water, and with all the food there for the maturing of hsh, 

 the California salmon might be made to flourish if we had two or 

 three miles of gravel bottom stream in which tliey could spawn. I 

 found in this little stream which runs up through the marshy 

 meadow, very low ground — it is only a small stream, and the 

 bottom is mud and the water is very cold but sluggish — I found in 

 there one day four or five large salmon that would run eight to ten 

 pounds, splashing around up in there (it was evidently their spawning 

 season) lookmg for a place to spawn ; but if they did lay their eggs 

 they sank down in the mud and were lost. There is no place for 

 them to hatch. I couldn't get any spawning ground for them. 



"I also made an experiment in brook trout in these little streams- 

 (springs) around those hills, and in this creek running down there, 

 and established a fish farm up there, quite a trout pand, and 

 stocked this little stream. This is eminently successful, because in 

 the stream the weeds and growth in the bottom are alive with the 

 natural food of the brook trout, the little fresh-water shrimp, and 

 now that mile and a half of stream running through this marsh is 

 full of brook trout, as fine trout as I ever saw. In fact I never 

 saw fatter and liner brook trout than I find in there. I can go in 

 there any time and take twenty-five or thirty trout in an hour or 

 two. That experiment has been eminently successful because the 

 food is there for the fish. I thought I would give you gentlemen 

 the benefit of my experience. I have never written anything about 

 it because it was a good deal of a question in my mind whether I 

 ought to do it, and whether I ought to discourage the attempts that 

 might be made, but I am so thoroughly satisfied that it is utterly 

 useless, that I think it should be made public." 



Along the Sny levee are found quite a number of large, deep and 

 clear ponds, formed by breaking of the levee, the water coming 

 through the breaks in such force as to cut deep and wide gulches 

 across the land adjoining. When the levee was repaired the owners 

 of the land, in order to get from one portion to another, tilled a 

 road across them, which, acting as a dam, soon caused a pond or 

 lake to form from the siepage of water through the sand, or from 

 surface water. These ponds were, of course, free at the time from 

 fish of any kind. 



After the break in 1880-1881, while working the levee pits outside 

 of the levee, gathering the young fish for distribution, we caused to 

 be put into one of the deepest of these lakes a number of thousands 

 of the young bass only, as they were gathered, and into the others, 

 as we came to them, quantities of the fish just as they were taken. 

 In the lake where the bass only had been placed we note some very 

 fine specimens of bass, but few of them, and the young quite 

 scarce. In the ponds into which we placed tbe fish of all kinds, 

 just as they were taken, we found just as good fish in size, and plenty 

 of the young of all varieties, and constantly increasing. In view of 



