330 Fourth Annual Report of the 



important species in point of numbers sent out were shad, frost- 

 fish, whitefish, lake herring, brown trout, rainbow trout, lake 

 trout, brook trout, smelt, maskalonge, small-mouthed black bass, 

 yellow perch, pikeperch, tomcod, flatfish and lobsters. The policy 

 of stocking inland lakes with whitefish and lake herring has been 

 consistently followed because it is believed that these fish will 

 supply a vast amount of cheap and wholesome food for the people, 

 and it will be comparatively easy to take them by angling if all 

 other methods of capture are forbidden. The lake trout is steadily 

 increasing in the large inland lakes; but, on account of the con- 

 tours of the lake bottoms and other natural causes, it is extremely 

 difficult to collect the eggs in the spawning season. A very good 

 illustration of this is found in Keuka lake, which yields many 

 tons of lake trout for market use and home consumption through- 

 out the fishing season and yet the number of eggs that can be 

 obtained by the use of nets on the spawning ledges of this trout is 

 uniformly small. 



The brood trout at nearly all the stations have been liberated in 

 public waters, and the supply of eggs, for the most part, is now 

 obtained by purchase from commercial hatcheries. This promotes 

 economy because the private hatcheries can furnish eggs much 

 cheaper than we can produce them. They have the advantage of 

 being able to market table trout at any time of the year, and the 

 eggs are a by-product. The brown trout have been retained at 

 Caledonia for the reason that private establishments do not propa- 

 gate this species. The early spawning race of rainbow trout has 

 also been kept at Cold Spring Harbor because of the advantage 

 of earlier distribution of the fry and fingerlings derived from such 

 eggs. Small-mouthed black bass are not wintered over at any of 

 the stations except Linlithgo. It has been demonstrated at Con- 

 stant a and Ogdensburg that adult fish very near the spawning 

 condition can be taken from outside waters and introduced into 

 the ponds when they are almost ready to deposit their eggs. This 

 circumstance makes it possible to avoid the expense and risk of 

 keeping adult bass through the winter. The bass are so abundant 

 in Oneida lake and in the St. Lawrence river and other streams 

 in the vicinity of Ogdensburg as to make the collection of gravid 

 fish for pond cultivation very easy. Chautauqua lake is another 



