258 low to obtain it. 
The fish will now do very much of this work by disturbing any 
deposit and sending it on to the screen, whence it may be raked 
out ; indeed, they often scour the bottom pretty well. There isa 
good deal of material to settle to the bottom, such as the sediment 
brought down by the current, dust from the atmosphere, splash- 
ings from heavy rains, the excrement from the fish themselves, 
etc., and care should be taken that masses of filth do not 
accumulate unduly. These matters are easily kept right by 
constant attention from the beginning, but should accumulations 
be carelessly allowed in the ponds, wholesale disaster may be the 
result. 
I have sometimes been asked whether yearlings reared in 
ponds and then turned out can hold their own against the wild 
fish. Undoubtedly they can. I have tried many experiments by 
way of testing this, and am quite satisfied about it. Should any- 
one have any doubt on the subject, nothing is easier than to place 
a few large trout for a short time amongst any yearlings to be 
turned out. The latter are soon educated, for they value dear life 
more than might be supposed. 
I turned a number of yearlings into a pool in a natural 
stream which flows close by my writing room, and as I now sit 
writing this, I can see what goes on in that pool. There was one 
big trout in it. The yearlings when once fairly settled took up 
their positions, and waited for anything in the shape of food that 
was brought down by the current. The big trout did the same, 
and I saw him several times make an attempt upon the life of one 
or other of the yearlings, but the way in which these eluded him 
was instructive. They were together in this pool for some days, 
but nothing serious seemed to happen till a flood took place, 
during which the big trout disappeared, but the yearlings still 
held their own, with an accession to their numbers. They might 
or might not be the same fish that were in the pool before, but 
there they were. 
Yearlings are at first largely fed in the ponds by means of the 
feeding box described for fry, the only difference being that the 
perforations at the bottom of the box are larger. Some of them 
will, however, take sufficiently large pieces of meat by July or 
August to make it safe to throw the food with the hand, and as 
