Trout Breeding. 5^ 



New wire-cloth does not take tar readily; put it al- 

 ternately in water and in air and slightly rust it and it 

 will catch on at once. For the trays a well-worn paint 

 brush is best ; and I have taken new brushes, tied them 

 down and cut them ofif until they were stiff enough to 

 use on wire-cloth. Do all this work in summer, in the 

 open air, and let it dry thoroughly before giving a sec- 

 ond coat. Do this each year and look out for every 

 rust spot and kill it. 



Don't use copper wire for hatching. Copper will do 

 for outlet screens for ponds, but it will kill eggs. Have 

 nothing to do with galvanized wire unless at outlets, for 

 the same reason. I've learned all this by experiment and 

 give you the result withou cost. The glass grilles 

 which are used in Europe a. s good ; nothing is cleaner 

 than glass, but the first cost and the breakage make it 

 objectionable. Wire trays are just as good, and much 

 cheaper. 



Some years ago, to my surprise, Mr. Frank N. Clark 

 announced that he had gone back to the use of gravel 

 for hatching trout. When we used gravel we sifted it 

 so that it was not larger than the trout eggs, running 

 through a No. lo screen to get rid of larger pieces and 

 then through a No. 14 to work out the sand. Even 

 then some eggs would get into the gravel and die, grow 

 fungus and become a nuisance, while under the gravel 

 was a black mess full of sulphureted hydrogen which 

 smelt to heaven when the gravel was stirred. Knowing 

 that Mr. Clark is always sincere in all his statements 

 — although we often disagree on some trivial point — I 

 wrote him asking for his reasons for using gravel, at 

 the same time telling him that I wished to publish what 

 he said. He writes as follows : 



