396 Fisninc uv American WATERS. 
fish often form food for trout, Lebault advises the feeding of 
trout by throwing into the pond chippings of bread, curds, 
grains, or the entrails of chickens, or of any bird or beast you 
kill to feed yourselves. On the score of feeding trout in pre- 
serves, our experience is that they are generally fed too much. 
In ponds where feed is scarce, living bait should be thrown 
in, such as minnows, mummies, shrimp, and all kinds of fish 
which nature intended for bait by forbidding them ever to 
become more than three inches in length. But even this 
should be done sparingly. We have known several ponds on 
Long Island where the fish died while they were fed sump- 
tuously, and when dead were found to be in excellent condi- 
tion. We regret to state that some animals endowed with 
the exterior semblance of humanity keep trout-ponds, and pre- 
tend that they are waters intended for the propagation of 
trout, when, in reality, they are pounds, or liquid bastiles, 
wherein to imprison trout until they command a high price 
in Fulton Market. When they get orders for them, they at 
once feed them with a huge meal of mummies (small fish), 
and when the trout have goreed themselves so that, in some 
instances, the tails of the fish which the trout vainly endeay- 
ored to swallow are seen protruding from their mouths, these 
Peter Funks then sweep the pond with a net, and send the 
trout thus stuffed to market, and receive therefor the price 
which healthy tront command. During the past season one 
dolar and a half'a pound has frequently been paid for trout 
bought at wholesale. It is said that these Peter Funks rob 
the trout-streams of their neighborhoods by means of nets 
during the close season—hetween the first of September and 
the first of March—and deposit their stolen gains in liquid 
pounds, where they feed them until the market opens, for it 
is unlawful to catch or sell trout during the close season, ex- 
cept for the purpose of science or the object of propagation. 
