63 



Foot!.— The best food for trout fry is raw liver, chop- 

 ped as fine as possible, and then rubbed through a screen 

 or sieve with a flat stick. It must be reduced to the con- 

 sistency of pulp, and contain no strings or gristle. A 

 chopping machine is made for chopping hash and sausage, 

 and either that, or a couple of sharp knives are used to 

 chop the liver. "What is used is mixed with water so as 

 to reduce it to about the thickness of cream. A tea- 

 cup full of this mixture will feed a hundred thousand fish 

 when they first begin to feed. The best way to feed them 

 is to take a cabe-knife, dip it in the food and slirt ofi" 

 what adheres into the troughs; a very simple way, but 

 one answering all practical purposes. Care should be 

 taken not to feed too much, else the surplus food will re- 

 main on the bottom, and decaying there foul the trough. 

 The reason of the difficulty in raising young fish appears 

 to be that they are literally starved to death. The food 

 which we can give them is not natural to them, it is 

 often given in such coarse pieces that they cannot take it, 

 and sometimes, through the carelessness of a hired hand, 

 they are neglected two or three days at a time. 



It is impossible to get the natural food for the ffy, in 

 tact no one knows what it is, further than that it must be 

 microscopic insects of some sort, as the adult trout are 

 never known to feed on anything but animal food. It is 

 found in the spring runs, even actually in them, as they 

 apparently issue bare of life from the bosom of the earth. 

 Liver is but a poor and unnatural substitute for thin food 

 with fish so delicate as the trout, and if they once get the 

 habit of feeding naturally on what the water offers they 

 will not take the artificial food afterward. Fish, of any 

 age, learn to eat that food which is most abundant around 

 them. Anglers know this by experience, and use the 

 flies which they see on the stream on which they are fish 



