Trout Breeding. 139 



have been read on the subject before the American 

 Fisheries Society. 



It may be possible that one yearling trout, having 

 escaped enemies of small size, is as good as ten fry. 

 Admitting this to be true, for the sake of argument, 

 then I say plant the ten fry, because it is cheaper to do 

 so, if you are to put out a million or more for some 

 State or Government hatchery. At the South Side 

 Sportsmen's Club, at Oakdale, Long Island, N. Y., 

 they feed their fry until they are yearlings, remove the 

 screens and let them find their way to their lakes. 

 They have a fishculturist and one or two assistants, 

 who have little else to do, and the expense is only for 

 food. Under the same circumstances I should do the 

 same, while planting some fry in the head-waters of 

 their many miles of streams. But, when in chargr. at 

 Cold Spring Harbor, there was danger that the Srate 

 Fish Commission would order me to feed fry to year- 

 ' lings and plant them, and to do this would take money 

 needed for new ponds ; and my only way to prevent this 

 was by an indirect appeal to them not to enter upon 

 such a wasteful course by papers read at the American 

 Fisheries Society, and no yearlings, except a few sal- 

 mon, were planted from that station while I was in 

 charge. 



Having called it a wasteful way of planting fish from 

 a State hatchery, it follows that I should prove the 

 charge. A man would leave the hatchei-y with ten 

 ten-gallon cans of fry, 5,000 in each can, for streams 

 up the Hudson, and be on the way twenty-four hours, 

 often more. To take 5,000 yearlings — and many of 

 our yearlings were 9 inches, 23 mm., long — would re- 

 quire him to make five trips, for ten cans is about all a 

 man can attend to on a long trip, reckoning fifty cans 



