l8 Modern FishcuUurenn Presh and Salt Watef. 



75 'or 80 per cent, of the young are kept through the 

 month of May, it is, in my opinion, a good average, and 

 much more than I did in my first three .years of trout 

 culture. In those days there was no one to give the re- 

 sults of experience, at least none who would do so, and 

 we had to blunder through and profit the next season by 

 the dearly-bought experience of the last. A young trout 

 which is safely brought through the month of May has 

 passed all infantile dangers and is almost as good as 

 raised. 



The culture of the carnivorous fishes is attended with 

 more dangers than that of others, as in addition to the 

 number of enemies they will devour their own kind; 

 and the trout is a truly carnivorous fish, notwithstand- 

 ing the fact that it has been starved into eating corn 

 bread and other vegetarian diet. This habit necessi- 

 tates the keeping of the different sizes apart, if small 

 ponds are used, and increases the care and trouble. 



Of our other carnivorous, or perhaps piscivorous 

 fishes-, there are few or none which are worth the atten- 

 tion of the farmer, or which could be made a source of 

 much food or any profit. Waters are stocked with the 

 black bass for the sport of catching them ; but they pro- 

 duce but little food, while the pike or pickerel {Esox) 

 which are caught for sport are so fearfully destructive 

 that anglers protest against their introduction into any 

 waters not inhabited by them. In order to bring tlie 

 habits of fishes and their different characters more plain- 

 ly before the minds of those who have never studied 

 them closely, they might be compared, in respect to their 

 food, to certain well-known quadrupeds, in a general 

 sort of way, first stating that there are no fishes which 

 are so strictly vegetarians as some mammals are. We 

 may then compare the pike, bass, and perch to the car- 



