PROPAGATION OF FISH. 233 



pound trout is five hundred, and I believe it frequently 

 exceeds a thousand, and salmon have many more. Con- 

 ceive, for a moment, if each female trout produced one- 

 hundred mature fish, which in three years would each 

 produce one hundred more, the incredible number that 

 would exist. 



The waters of the earth are capable, if as well tilled, 

 of supporting as many as the land ; and there is no 

 reason why they should not be cultivated. Nothing is 

 simpler ; as with the land a savage may scratch up the 

 earth sufficiently with a stick to support himself and 

 family, a scientific farmer, with proper tools, would in 

 the same ground support a hundred times as many ; so 

 with the water, a careless, lazy person will get one fish 

 for ten eggs, while a thorough-going, careful laborer will 

 bring to perfection almost all. 



This may be done with only the labor, which, in fact, 

 is the greatest of pleasures, and at the small expense of 

 feeding the fish. Young fry require fine food, such as 

 meat or fish grated, but as they grow older, devour 

 almost anything. Eonalds, the author of the " Fly-fisher's 

 Entomology," having dosed them with cayenne pepper 

 and mustard, found it not in the least disagreeable or 

 apparently injurious. 



If this were an attempt to introduce fish where they 

 had never before existed, there might be some doubt of 

 its success, but it is merely following a course adopted in 

 England and France with astonishing results, by which 

 many streams that had been as totally depopulated as 

 the Hudson, and none could be more so, have been 

 entirely restocked, and are now sources of great profit to 



