DOMESTICATED TROUT.* 



CHAPTER I. 

 INTRODUCTION. 



WHEN the writer of the following pages asked 

 Seth Green, in 1866, "how many of those 

 who engaged in trout breeding would succeed," he 

 answered, with his well-known quickness of manner, 

 " One in a million." There was so much wanting, at 



* How fully the word " domesticated " will finally apply to 

 trout that are bred and grown artificially, time alone can decide. 

 It is still a very doubtful question whether they will ever be- 

 come so accustomed and attached to the habitations of man that 

 they will prefer to remain around his homes and under his pro- 

 tection, like dogs and fowls, and so become in the strictest 

 sense domestic creatures. 



Still, this result is not impossible, perhaps not improbable. 

 Cattle and horses become as wild as buffaloes and deer 

 when left to run wild long enough. Artificial influences have 

 given these creatures their domestic habits. Why may not a 

 sufficiently long course of similar influences create a similar 

 change in the habits of trout ? 



Trout are not natural ly averse to man in their primitive wildness, 

 before they have learned to fear him. I have seen wild trout in the 

 uninhabited forests of New Brunswick as little disposed to avoid 

 man as sheep in a pasture. Why, then, may we not, by taking 

 away their fear of man through domestication, restore that 



