Subjects foe Consideeation. 381 



fished by amateurs with the fly, or the trout are fed, and then 

 netted and taken to market. There is no general attention 

 paid to the procreation of the speclded beauties. Many of 

 the best preserves on the island are depleted of trout by sheer 

 neglect. They should divide their ponds, and catch their 

 large trout and use them for stocking subsidiary waters. In 

 a word, they should tap their dams with pipes, and conduct 

 water into spawning-boxes. Where their dams are near a 

 road or turnpike, they should run the pipes underneath, or 

 place their boxes along the embankment of the dam in such 

 position as to form a rather swift flow of water throughout 

 the line of boxes. Nothing can be more simple or safe. The 

 trout hatched in that way should be placed in small ponds, 

 each brood by itself, thus necessitating three of these sinall 

 ponds. As each brood arrives at two years of age, it should 

 be turned into the main preserve, and that preserve should 

 be swept annually with a large-meshed net, and all the large 

 trout so taken should be transferred to the pond of propaga- 

 tion, which should be watched during spawning-time — in 

 September, October, and November — and when found ripe 

 for spawning they should be netted, and the roe and milt 

 taken from them and laid in the breeding-boxes. 



Before proceeding farther, let me say here that what I may 

 state about propagating salmon is equally applicable to 

 brook trout, for the only difference in the treatment of sal- 

 mon and brook trout is found in the fact that trout will al- 

 ways prey upon roe and young fish — even its own — while 

 only the salmon helt is so unnatural; but this maternal ob- 

 tuseness is supposed to be acquired from not returning to 

 sea with her brood, and, thus left to the mercy of fresh-water 

 insects and the scanty food of the river, she becomes what 

 the habitans of Canada call a " meagre" with no more soul 

 than a miser. 



