Parasites, Diseases and Enemies. 265 



Mr. E. F. Boehm, now Superintendent of the State 

 hatchery at Newton's Corners, N. Y., was in the Cale- 

 donia hatchery with Mr. Roberts, and writes prac- 

 tically the same thing. 



"Six years ago, about the same disease appeared 

 among my trout from April to July. In June they died 

 in great numbers, from twenty-five to thirty every 

 night, and I was discouraged. One day I saw that a 

 great many more would die and thought that the cause 

 might be from feeding stale beef hearts. I stopped 

 feeding for ten days and then began giving them live 

 minnows, and in a week's time the mortality stopped 

 and L have lost very few trout since." — Albert Rackow, 

 Elmpnt, L. I. 



That there are occasional epidemics among fish is a 

 fact familiar to all who have had much experience with 

 them, and the cause is not at all understood. In the 

 summer of 1850 or 1851 the perch and pickerel in 

 Kinderhook Lake, Rensselaer County, N. Y., died in 

 great numbers and came in shore to die; some boys 

 who had walked down to the lake from Albany with 

 me refused to fish or touch the fish that were strug- 

 gling near the shore, we believing that they had been 

 poisoned. In 1856 I saw thousands of black bass dead 

 upon the shores of the small lakes along the Mississippi 

 River, near Potosi, Wisconsin. Some lakes in Central 

 New York — Hemlock, Honeoye and Canadice Lakes 

 — had an epidemic that killed many perch in the sum- 

 mer of 1870. In 1883, St. John's Lake, at Cold Spring 

 Harbor, N. Y., had a disease which killed the sunfish 

 in such numbers that the air was tainted. Greenwood 

 Lake, lying partly in New York and in New Jersey, 

 has been visited by a similar epidemic, although I can- 

 not give the years. 



