25O REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



so marked as the hatching of fry in the little troughs of Stephen Ludwig Jacobi in 

 Varenholtz in 1741. However, when it was demonstrated that fish could be success- 

 fully reared in the hatching troughs or rearing races to 8, 10 or 12 months of age, the 

 fry so gladly welcomed in other years became a drug in fish culture, almost despised 

 for public planting, and the popular demand was for fingerling or yearling trout, 

 because it was claimed justly that greater results were obtained from planting the 

 larger fish, as they were subject to fewer casualties than the baby fry. 



Let us look into the development of a brook trout from the egg to babyhood, 

 first under natural conditions and then in a hatchery where man improves upon 

 nature It is in the autumn that a "livelier crimson " comes upon the sides of the 

 male brook trout to indicate that the mating season has arrived, and the more quietly 

 colored female makes her way to some point where the current ripples over the 

 graveled bottom of the stream which constitutes the home of the pair. Sand may 

 have lodged amongst the pebbles or drift may have covered them, but the female 

 trout hangs motionless in the water, head upstream, the fins only fanning gently, 

 over some particular spot that she has selected, until suddenly, quicker than the eye 

 can follow the details of the movement, she partly turns on her side, makes a flirt 

 with her tail, and then rights herself while a small cloud of sand passes down stream 

 behind her. This motion is repeated again and again and the spot grows brighter 

 and larger, circular in form, until a saucer-like depression is made with the larger 

 pebbles paving it from center to circumference. During her labors of preparing the 

 bed that will later receive her eggs, she has not been without offers of assistance, for 

 the more gaudy hued male trout have hovered about and occasionally entered the 

 depression in the gravel, to be unceremoniously dispossessed or routed after a charge 

 that appears to be viciously vigorous. Often the female will seize the male in her 

 •mouth and give him as near a shaking as one fish can give another, or nip him fore 

 and aft to express her disapproval of his presence at that juncture. 



The males, too, fight among themselves for the favor of a female, but when the 

 spawning bed is fully prepared the favored male takes his place beside the female, 

 and together they quietly fan the water with their fins, until the time comes, when 

 with a tremendous motion of body and fins extending from head to tail, the female 

 expresses from her ovaries her amber-colored eggs, while the male fish extrudes the 

 milt necessary to impregnate them. During the operation of spawning the pair may 

 turn on their sides or rise into an almost erect position, but the result is the same 

 whatever the positions they assume. The eggs are heavy and non-adhesive, and sink 

 to the bottom of the depression, called the spawning bed, and such of them as come 

 in contact with the particles of which the milt is made up are vivified. The current 



