312 SALMON AND TROUT. 
however, be remarked that much will turn on the smallness of 
the fry. Trout are sadly indifferent to family ties, but they will 
thrive on their infant grandchildren or great-grandchildren, 
whereas the occasional assimilation of an adult son or daughter 
will not keep them in condition. The heaviest meal will not 
fatten when it takes ten days to digest. Hence the great value 
of a good supply of minnows in a trout stream. Easily caught 
and greatly relished, they tend to check the practice of infan- 
ticide among elderly trout, while they are fattening from being 
readily digestible. 
I have roughly guessed at two pounds as the weight be- 
yond which a trout should not be wholly dependent on insect 
diet ; but they sometimes take to the minnow very early. I 
remember watching a fish on the upper waters of the Frome 
extremely busy among some fry just where a small drain joined 
the stream. I was fly fishing, but, failing to raise him, I caught 
a tiny stickleback, clipped off the spines, and threw it to him 
on a double worm hook like a fly minnow. He took it in- 
stantly, and on landing him I found that, though weighing little 
more than three-quarters of a pound, he had actually forty-six 
small minnows in his maw, the uppermost freshly swallowed,while 
those farthest down were more than half digested, and perhaps 
more numerous than I made them out by the tale of backbones. 
This fish, though he had taken to a minnow diet so young, 
was very thick and firm-fleshed. 
But it is for keeping up the condition of really large fish 
that an abundant supply of minnows is especially desirable, and 
I would strongly urge proprietors and angling clubs to lose no 
opportunity of obtaining additions to the local stock. There 
are plenty of small streams and spring ditches where minnows 
abound, with no trout to keep their numbers down, and it will 
be best to obtain them from a great variety of waters. Care 
must of course be taken that no fry of ‘scale fish’ find a place 
among them. 
Next to the minnow in value as food for trout comes that very 
delicate little fish, the stone-loach, or ‘ beardie,’ the delight of 
