394 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



The Conservative Club, 



25—3—85- 

 To the Marquis of Exeter. 



My Lord, — I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of 

 your Lordship's letter of to-day's date, and beg to inclose herewith 

 the extract from Land and Water, upon the ' Fish Breeding at 

 Burghley House,' in which I found very much interest and pleasure, 

 and was very sorry indeed when I had to give it up. 



The perforated zinc linings to the troughs or trays were entirely 

 my own idea, and they were made by Mr. Tillett, an ironmonger 

 in Stamford. There were three principal reasons which led me 

 to try the perforated tray ; firstly, the necessity of doing some- 

 thing to cleanse the gravel which used to get such a quantity of 

 sediment accumulated during the Hatching, and more especially 

 during the feeding of the young fry ; the food not eaten would lie 

 among the gravel until it was bad, and a fungus would soon grow 

 upon it, and would soon cling to any gravel, egg, or sickly little 

 fish that happened to be near it, so that when I used to take it up, 

 with the little pincers I had for the purpose, a whole bunch of 



will be ready for the older fish as they come down, and ready to tiirn out into 

 the brook or pond, when the umbilical sac is absorbed. Have a rose in the 

 bottom trough. 



When they were kept in troughs, and fed for several months, very few were 

 reared ; the percentage of deaths (from gill fever) being so large. But since I 

 have turned them out as soon as they begin to feed, I have been more success- 

 ful with them, and therefore should always turn them out if I had a brook or 

 pond to turn them into, on the absorption of the navel-bag. Such places 

 should be selected when the water is rather shallow, and not accessible to 

 larger fish, and where there is a gravelly bottom, and with bushes or trees on 

 the banks, which not only afford shade, but also attract numerous insects which 

 are desirable for the fish. 



In some of the ponds the fish require feeding as soon as they are turned in. 

 Fish roe suspended in the water by a piece of string they are very fond of, and 

 very soon leave nothing but the skin. The very small red worm is also good 

 for them ; they do not object to curds, and the flesh of frogs boiled and grated. 

 By Midsummer they are large enough to take small maggots, of which they 

 seem very fond. They feed best at early mom, and I always feed them at a 

 given spot, and they are mostly on the look-out. In our pond I have some two 

 or three years old {the American salmon-trout and the Swiss great lake trout), 

 and there are some very fine fish among them, between two and three pounds 

 each. In the summer I put a few hundred minnows in, and I now feed them 

 about twice a week with beef and biscuits, and they come at it with a rush 

 delightful to behold. 



George Deane. 



