232 AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. 



subject. It is dreamland to us, with a very little ascer- 

 tained waking reality. What do we know even of the 

 various breeds of the same species of fish, save the bare 

 fact of their existence ? What do we know of the food 

 and conditions most favorable to them? Consider the 

 trout. Can any fish display greater diversity or variety 

 of size and value than trout? And how do we account 

 for it ? 



" Trout in one stream will be much larger, firmer, red- 

 der, and better shaped than in others. This may, in a 

 measure, be owing to the greater aJmndance of food ; but I 

 have every reason to believe that it proceeds quite as much 

 from the kind of food that they are enabled to obtain. In 

 some rivers and lakes we find the trout large, handsome, 

 red, and vigorous fish ; in others, we find them small and 

 meagre ; nay, even in the same lake the fish will be in- 

 fluenced in a strange way by locality, so much so that the 

 very breed even appears to be different. It would seem 

 difficult to account for this peculiarity upon any other 

 hypothesis than that of food and the nature of the water 

 and soil around them, and yet the fish appear to be a 

 totally different breed ; and it certainly appears possible 

 that the character of the fish may have changed by de- 

 grees, through successive generations, and owing to being 

 bred and fed in a difierent manner from the other fish. I 

 have placed trout from one stream into another, and after 

 years could very easily distinguish them from their com- 

 peers of the stream. But it is doubtful if their progeny 

 would show and retain their special characteristics, though 

 if they interbreed with the fish of the stream, as they 

 would be pretty sure to, the breed might possibly be im- 

 proved by the infusion of fresh blood. 



" Few experiments of any note have been tried in the 

 feeding of fish, this being as yet almost untrodden ground j 



