66 AMERICAN FISH CULTTJKB. 



larger than a "wiggle tail" in a barrel of stale rain-water. 

 Poor helpless pigmy ! will it ever rise to the angler's fly, a 

 monster of four pounds, and give him a half-hour's hard 

 fight, or smash his tackle ? Not one chance in a hundred 

 if born in some pebbly brush-covered rill. How many such 

 would its own father or mother, a foot long, devour at a 

 single meal? five hundred? yes a thousand ! If such was 

 not the law of nature, trout would be as thick in our streams 

 as mosquitoes or midges sometimes are in the air above 

 them. They would be dirt cheap in our markets — ^they 

 would be a nuisance. Therefore, He who made nature's laws 

 is all wise. Shall we thwart these laws or violate them ? 

 Did we do so when we made a Newton pippin of the 

 crab apple of the forest ? or produced the cabbage, that 

 grows tons to the acre, from a trifling plant found on the 

 sea-shore ? 



In a week or two, the troutlings begin to move about, 

 then to flit through the mimic brook in the hatching-trough 

 as you cast your shadow over it, and, true to instinct, stick 

 their heads under pebbles, or hide under the fall made 

 below the strip at the head of the nest. They become 

 more agile as the sac is absorbed, and at last, when the 

 whole stock of pabulum is exhausted, they begin to seek 

 their own living, darting through the water after micro- 

 scopic insects, groping in the gravel for larvae ; or rising 

 at some minute gnat, or at atoms of blood or curdled milk 

 or yolk of egg, that are fed to them. 



As soon as the first brood appears in a trough, a fine wire 

 cloth screen should be placed across the lower end. When 



