462 SALMON AND TROUT, 
NATURAL FOOD. 
The one great difference between my treatment of young 
fish and the plan adopted by some other pisciculturists lies in 
‘Feeding.’ It must not be supposed that my fish are turned out 
into the ponds without any thought of how much food they 
may get ; on the contrary, it is by the most rigid preservation of 
the natural food that I am able to grow yearlings to the size and 
number I usually do. Every little water-course on my grounds 
is utilised as a means of producing large quantities of natural 
food, and any one who knows:the immensely prolific nature of 
aquatic insects, will soon understand that I have no difficulty 
in providing sufficient food for the fish in all stages. Two or 
more ponds of a ‘sequence’ are set apart for the reproduction 
of food only, and as these are properly situated a great quantity 
can be sent down to the nursery ponds as often as necessary. 
Stone (p. 225) says, ‘ Trout’s food, when wild, consists chiefly 
of water-insects, smaller fish, larvee, fish eggs, crustacea, and 
the flies and insects which fall from the air into the water ; 
all of them together forming an astonishingly extensive variety. 
The quality of their food affects the growth and appearance of 
trout, and it is even thought that the difference in the colour of 
their meat is sometimes caused by certain kinds of feed; the 
fresh-water gammari, or pulex, being supposed especially favour- 
able to the production of red-meated trout.’ At p. 289 of 
F. Buckland’s ‘ British Fishes,’ he says, ‘Some trout are white- 
fleshed, and some are pink-fleshed ; some say it is dependent 
on the food, but I think this cannot be the entire cause, for I 
have caught both pink and white in the same net, and both 
living exactly under the same circumstances. One theory of the 
cause of the flesh being red has lately been told me by the Duke 
of Argyll, who believes that red-fleshed trout have been feeding 
on the fresh-water shrimp, and that the horn-like coats of this 
little animal turn red in the stomach through the action of the 
gastric juices. Lord Dorchester also writes that “his best 
