Jan. 20, 1900.J 
pf the Corisa are attached to submerged objects, are very 
numerous and densely massed. Much is written about the 
water-boatmen in the text books, but I have selected 
briefly only that which may interest fish breeders. 
Fish Food. 
Seventeen years ago, I find from looking over the 
Proceedings of the American Fisheries, I began to write 
upon the subject of providing food for fishes, and. since 
that time it has been charged that "Food for Fishes" is _a 
hobby of mine, and I have even been accused of ridmg it 
with whip and spur, and I am always glad to find that 
others have the same mount. Mr. Walker says on the 
subject: "To begin with, the amateur must not suppose 
that because he puts fish into a stream or pond he will 
succeed in stocking that water or increasing the head of 
fish. There are, many things to be considered. The 
river, stream or pond must be of a suitable character for 
the fish, and there must be plenty of food. I am sure 
that it is much more important to consider carefully 
whether the water is suitable and contains a proper 
supply of food than to consider how the fish are to be 
obtained, for recourse may always be had to a fisli- 
culturist— fish of almost any kind and age can be bought 
ready made." (In this country fish are furnished free by 
the National and State Governments, as all readers of 
Forest and Stre.\m well know.) "The point I would 
impress upon the amateur more forcibly than anything 
else, is that he should be sure that there is plenty for his 
fish to eat in the water before he thinks of putting them 
into it." 
Unfortunately, that is about the last thing an amateur 
fish planter thinks about, if he thinks about it at all, and 
the chances are large in favor of his never thinking about 
what his fish are to eat. 
An applicant for public fish to plant in public waters, 
trout for instance, thinks he has done his full duty when 
he writes in his application that the stream is a "natural 
trout stream." The stream may have been a trout 
stream at some time, but conditions may have changed to 
render it uninhabitable for trout; the flow of water may 
fail at some seasons ; from lack of shade the water may 
have become too warm ; predaceous fish may have found 
their way into it; it may have become foul from mills or 
factories or sewers, and its food supply may have become 
exhausted. 
As a mater of fact, 10,000 trout fry were secured from 
a public hatching station and planted in a stream in the 
spring, and in the autumn following I saw where the 
stream had been, for all that was left was a dry bed that 
looked as though a watering cart should run over its 
length to keep the dust down, but it was a "natural 
trout brook." 
Repeatedly I have advised the introduction of fresh- 
water shrimps (Gammarus pulex) into trout waters that 
did not contain them, and in which they would thrive— 
for they will not thrive in all waters. I have read re- 
cently that one authority ranked this shrimp low as fish 
food," although at the same time others argued in its favor. 
Mr. Walker says of it: "The fresh-water shrimps 
should always be tried. * * * Where it thrives it in- 
creases very rapidly, and forms about the best article of 
food that can be given to trout." 
Caledonia Creek, on which one of the State hatching 
stations is situated, is an example of what the fresh-water 
shrimp in abundance will do for the trout contained in 
it. This stream fairly swarms with the Gammarus, and it 
is drawn upon by the State to furnish the shrimps for 
other waters, and yet it sustains more trout for the 
volume of water contained than any other wild stream of 
which I have knowledge. 
In my article "Food for Fishes," already referred to, I 
said of another crustacean: "If all is true that has been 
said of the Daphnia, they are the most prolific animals on 
earth; During a correspondence with an Austrian fish- 
culturist in regard to fish food, he sent me a clipping from 
an Austrian newspaper, which, being translated, read that 
'a pair of Daphnia increases (reproduces) within twenty- 
four hours to 1,000,000,000 of descendants.' This seems 
to be too remarkable a feat in reproduction for one poor 
little Daphnia to be charged with. I submitted the corre- 
spondence to Mr. Charles G. Atkins, superintendent of the 
Maine hatching stations of the United States Fish Com- 
mision, who, more than any man that I know in this 
country, has investigated and practiced the artificial propa- 
gation of natural fish food. Mr. Atkins said : 'The man 
who wrote that has committed an enormous blunder. The 
increase of Daphnia is at no such rate. In an article that 
I read some time since, in Revue des Sciences Naturelles 
Appliquees, a writer who appeared to me to be exaggerat- 
ing in other matters that I knew something about, gave 
this estimate, that the descendants of a single female 
Daphnia would in sixty days amount to 1,291,370,075 in- 
dividuals. That is astounding enough, and I am not yet 
ready to acept it, but Mr. ■ makes a female Daphnia 
do about four-fifths as much in twentj'-four hours. 
" 'We have studied Daphnia some at this station, kept 
them in aquaria and under stich restraint as enabled us to 
follow their reproduction. The eggs are large; the brood 
cavity could not hold a hundred of them at once ; I should 
say less than fifty would be the average. In summer they 
hatch in the brood cavity and come out alive and kicking. 
It takes three or four days for eggs to mature and come 
forth, and about a week for the young to come to 
maturity so as to reproduce. Of course, I recognize the 
possibility of European Daphnia being more prolific than 
ours.'" 
The italics in the concluding sentence of the quotation 
are mine, and I may have been hasty in printing in a public 
document what I have quoted before finding out whether 
the European Daphnia are more prolific than our own. 
I counted the eggs in the brood cavity of several speci- 
mens, each of two different species of Daphnia, and found 
that Mr. Atkins was very moderate in his estimate, for 
in no instance did I count fifty eggs, the average being 
about forty. 
Mr. Walker in his book, "The Rainbow Trout," says 
this of the European Daphnia: 
"The Daphnia pulex breeds at a rate which is almost 
inconceivable. The young female produces her first brood 
of young when she is ten days old, and goes on breeding 
on an average of three or four times a month. The 
iemale and her progeny are rendered fertile by one act of 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
coition, probably for fifteen generations at least, without 
any fusther intervention of the male. (Baird's Natural 
History of British Entomostraca.) I tried to calculate 
out how many individuals would result from a single 
female if she and her progeny were protected for six 
months, but as I got into the billions before I had cal- 
culated the result of three months' protection, I thought 
it useless to carry it on, as this was enough to prove that 
they increased sufficiently rapidly to form a valuable 
article of food for the fish." 
La:ter I may say more on this subject, but now I vvish 
to turn to a matter which might come under the heading 
of this note, but is slightly different in detail. 
Feeding of Wild and Tame Trout. 
As every one knows who has followed the progress 
made in fish breeding operations, for many years after 
trout eggs were hatched artificially the young fish were 
turned into wild waters as soon as they had absorbed 
the yolk sac with which they were born. When it was 
first urged that better results would be obtained from 
planting fish that had been reared at the hatching stations 
until they were eight or twelve months old, the fry- 
planting advocates claimed that fish fed by hand in the 
rearing boxes at the hatchery would not thrive when 
turned into wild waters, as they would not know how to 
find natural food after months of liver feeding. That was 
really never an objection, as was proven when the finger- 
lings and yearlings were turned out to hustle for their food. 
The real objection, and the only one that would hold 
water, was the cost of food and attendance, and even that 
is now ancient history, and all public hatching stations 
more or less are rearing fingerlings or older fish, so far 
as the water supply will permit. 
Our friends over the sea have discovered an objection 
to rearing trout to two years of age, say, upon liver or 
horseflesh alone, and then turning them into water 
where they must seek natural food, and I can do no better 
than give Mr. Walker's own words, found in his book 
on our rainbow trout. It is well understood in the 
Eastern United States that rainbow trout have been 
planted in streams that are apparently suitable for the 
fish, and that they disappear forever from the streams 
before they are two years old. Mr. Walker argues from 
his experience that the fish leave because of an insuffi- 
ciency of natural food in the waters where the fish are 
planted, but that is not the particular point I wish to 
make in quoting from the book. He says: "While 
writing on the subject of horseflesh-fed fish, it is neces- 
sary to question the wisdom of one exclusive dietary of 
this sort for any trout, as the stomach is probably un- 
fitted by such diet to perform the work it may be after- 
ward called upon to do, when the fish is set free to feed 
for itself. In a post-mortem made a few weeks ago, the 
stomach of a trout was represented by a thin walled sac 
instead of being a muscular, thick walled organ, with a 
thick, velvety secreting mucous membrane. T?hrough 
the thin wall could be seen a red, doughy mass, the 
whole, indeed, resembling uncooked sausage. This re- 
semblance was greatly increased when the stomach was 
cut open, as the mass, which was evidently chopped 
flesh, shelled out, leaving the stomach sac empty. From 
this condition of the wall it may be said with certainty 
that that stomach could never deal with or digest the sub- 
stances which in the wild state trout make their staple diet. 
Again, as in other branches of pisciculture, the Amer- 
icans are leading the way, and now, at Wytheville, Va., 
large quantities of sea fish, roe, shrimp, etc., are sent 
up from the sea, canned and used as food for young fish. 
The system pursued at Canterbury, Kent, is the most 
sensible of any perhaps in this country. There they take 
care that natural food shall flourish in the two-year-olds' 
pond, and gradually lessen day by day the amount of ar- 
tificial food supplied. In this way, when the young fish 
are ready to turn out they have at least learned how to 
hunt their food, and what to feed on." 
The rainbow trout appears to grow more and more in 
favor in Europe, particularly in England and Germany, 
while out native fontinalis is not esteemed except in ponds 
from which it cannot escape. Mr. Walker observes: 
"As far as our knowledge of these two fish (^fontinalis 
and rainbow) extend, their habits seem to be very diifer.- 
ent. The fontinalis seems to prefer such food as young 
fish, while the rainbow rises more freely to the fly than 
our own trout (brown or fario). Some time ago a case 
was brought forward at a meeting of the Piscatorial 
Society, in which, in a water stocked with rainbows, 
fontinalis and our own brown trout, the rainbows took 
the fly only, while the fontinalis and brown trout took 
the minnow. That rainbows are never fish feeders, I 
would not for a moment state, as I have seen them take 
minnows when in captivity, but I do not believe that 
they are cannibals to the same extent even as fario, with- 
out taking the fontinalis into consideration." It is more 
than likely that in this country the conditions suitable for 
the rainbow have not been properly studied when they 
have been transplanted from the Pacific to the Atlantic 
slope. I know that in my own cas<: it took years to 
define what I now know to be a prejudice that I have 
against this fish. That they are a sporting fish there is 
not the least doubt, and that they have remained in some 
waters when planted and disappeared from others with- 
out apparent cause is probably the chief thing that can 
be urged against them, and that tends to prove that they 
are not always planted in waters fitted for them. It 
may be lack of proper food, or it may be that the tem- 
perature of the water is unsuitable, that causes failure, 
but whatever it may be, the fish is well worth experi- 
menting with to find waters in which it will remain 
and thrive. The rainbows were planted in streams flow- 
ing into a lake in northern New York during a series of 
years, and all disappeared before the end of tlie second 
year, and the planting ceased. Last year the rainbows 
were found in the lake itself, and such of them as were 
caught afforded fine sport, as nearly all were fish- of 
about 6 pounds each, and this year (I mean 1899) the 
State planted a large number of fingerling rainbows in 
the lake. English writers say that the rainbow will 
always fail if put in cold water, either escaping or gradu- 
ally dying off, but that they do well in warm water 
where neither our native fontinalis nor the brown trout 
will thrive. The latter I accept, but I would wish for 
some evidence in regard to the former. Another thing: 
Mr. Walker states that the rainbow will grow to twice 
5S 
the size of the brown trout in the same length of time, 
that they will rise to the fly better, and fight more gamely. 
I am surprised at this last admission^ but. so it is writ- 
ten. 
The question of food for mr fishes is the tiext »great 
question to be solved in fish breeding, and first we wish 
to find just what our waters contain in the way of fisH 
food, and then supply what may he.l.acking, tG.i3,.upp.0ii-t the 
fish planted in them. 
A. N. Cheney. 
Massachusetts Fish Commission. 
The Massachusetts Commissioners of Inland Fisheries 
and Game send us their thirty-fourth annual report, com- 
prising the work of the year 1899. In Massachusetts ,as 
elsewhere, the dams in the streams are found to be an 
obstacle to the preservation of the fisheries, and the report 
opens with the story of the fishway at Middieborougti 
connecting the Nemaskct River with the large pond above 
what is known as Sherman's dam, and important as 
effecting the fisheries of Taunton River. It was necessary 
to put the matter into the hands of the Attorney-General 
before a suitable way could be here provided. 
Mill Pond in Yarmouth has been secured for the pur- 
pose of the ctiltivation of food fish, especially white perqh, 
for distribution. While the season has been remarkable 
for its drought, it docs not seem to have materially 
affected the trout streams. The catch has been good, and 
in many localities an increase has been reported. The 
open season for trout fishing should be shortened, and the 
taking of any trout less than 6 inches in length prohibited. 
Superintendent of Hatcheries John W. Delano reports 
that at the Sutton and Hadley hatcheries the work of 
trout and landlocked salmon breeding has been carried on 
with success. 
Many needed improvements have been made .at the Sutton and 
Iladl'ey hatcheries. Early in the spring the pond at Sutton was 
drawn down, thoroughly cleaned out, and all of the old fish dis- 
posed of. Some were liberated in the river below the hatchery, and 
about 100 of the largest were put into Lake Quinsigamond. We 
have also put into the same laice 225 two-year-old rainbow trout, 
grown at Sutton. Our fish were carefully selected, and 2,000 of 
the best two to four years old were saved for breeding stock, which 
have given us up to the present time 400,000 eggs, with prospects of 
about as many more. New ponds were put in early in the season 
for growing young fish, and we have on hand about 16,000 land- 
locked salmon, brown and brook trout fingerlings. 
Owing to an excess of water during heavy rains and freshets at 
Hadley, it has been necessary to strengthen the upper dam and put 
in another sluiceway. Two new ponds have been built, and the 
spawning race has been carried further out into the pond. There 
have been put into the pond in the last two years about 3,500 
yearling trout, and unless the percentage of loss is larger than 
usual, we should get at least half a million of eggs. I would 
recommend that another year pens be built for holding at least 
half of our breeding fish. While I am convinced that trout can 
he. grown cheaper and larger in deep ponds than otherwise, there 
is an uncertainty about the condition and number that can only 
be ascertained by drawing down the pond. On the other hand, 
where your fish are in pens, they can be seen at all times, and if 
disease appears, or the fish disappear, it is noticed at once, and the 
evil can be remedied. 
The new hatchery built at Adams last year was finished in twne 
to receive its allotment of 200,000 eggs. The spring supplying the 
house with water proved satisfactory in every respect, giving a 
large flow of even temperature, and free of sediment. One million 
eggs put on the trays at Winchester, Sutton, Hadley and Adams 
hatched with a small loss, and the fry were distributed in April 
and May. A list of the distributions will be found in the Appendix. 
Respecting the much discussed carp, the report says, 
and we take it that this portion comes from the pen of 
Commissioner Collins : 
Soon after the introduction of carp into this country by 
the iate Prof. Spencer F. Baird, then U. S. Commissioner 
of Fish and Fisheries, and before they were fairly estab- 
lished ill their new home, there came a howl from one 
end of the country to the other, charging that they, were 
worthless as food, and that they destroyed the spawn of 
other and more valuable fish. This came from people 
who were ignorant of the true character of this fish, and 
who had forgotten, if they ever knew, that Isaac Walton 
had termed the carp "the queen of the rivers." On the 
Great Lakes, where the fisheries were gradually growing 
less, the fishermen, true to their usual habit, laid the 
blame on the despised carp, iustead of admitting that the 
decrease was due to overfisliing. Some of the State Com- 
misions went so far as to recommend that steps should be 
taken to clear the waters of them — a proposition about as 
feasible as to propose to clear a ten-acre marsh of mos- 
quitoes, for carp, once introduced into waters of any con- 
siderable area, are there to stay. Ponds have been drawn 
down and apparently every carp removed, and in a few 
years thej^ were found to be as plenty as ever. 
Prof. Baird was a man of great good sense, and took 
no decided action without first considering the result. He 
made himself familiar with the methods and results of 
carp culture in Europe, and of the millions of dollars there 
invested in this industry and the profit arising therefrom. 
We know from personal interview with him that he had no 
hesitation in introducing them into American waters. 
Years have gone by. and the good Professor has passed 
from this life, but his work lives after him. Fully satis- 
fied with the information obtained from him and others, 
we have always advocated the importance of carp culture 
as likely to yield more money value than the culture of 
any other variety of fish, and that the farmer Avho owns 
meadow land with a never-failing brook running through 
it could make a carp pond which would yield him a good 
profit. 
Notwithstanding a.11 the diverse criticisms, we believe 
that, as a means of increasing the native fish, it is desir- 
able to stock many of our waters with carp, In support of 
this conclusion, we quote the following tables and ex- 
tracts from the report of the Fish Commission of Illinois 
for 1898 : 
Returns from twenty points on the Illinois River, probably not 
over seventy-five per cent, for this river, and representing only 
about two hundred miles frontage out of nearly or quite one 
thousand miles frontage of rivers productive of this great food 
product : 
1896. 
Carp, 3,678,000 pounds, net value ., ■. $99,059.50 
Other fish, 3,574,811 pounds, net value 108,527 72 
1897. 
Carp, 5,489,900 pounds, net value ?1S4,699.75 
Other fissh, 4,213,398 pounds, net value 114,783.07 
Carp are accused of driving out all the game fish and destroy- 
ing the youn^ of all other fish. The best argument to refute that 
theory is a plain statement of the conditions that exist this season 
(1898) in the Illinois River. Carp are more plentiful than ever, 
growing to immense size, and the increase in numbers wonderful, 
while there are more black bass and croppie than for many years 
before; and we can cite many instances in lakes along this river 
