PROPAGATION OF TROUT IN AMERICA. 183 
propagation to an unlimited extent, provided you have a living spring 
as your sinking fund. In that case an extended business may be sought 
more successfully by increasing the stock through means of artificial 
propagation. 
A preserve made from living springs was formed two years ago at 
Maspeth — a suburb only a mile east of Brooklyn — by stocking a pond 
which was made by leading water through iron pipes from a spring. A 
club of New York gentlemen hired the exclusive right to fish this pond 
with a fly from March until July, this year, for the sum of 2,500 dols. 
The owner is now enlarging the pond, and has let it for fly-fishing for 
several years, from March 1 to July 1 for 5,000 dols. the season. This 
sum is not a mean income for a small farmer to receive without the 
investment of much labour. 
Old ponds, even if inhabited by trout, are apt to fill with weeds 
which grow from all parts of the bottom, except the channel cut by the 
creek flowing through it ; and if the stream be too small compared with 
the size of the pond, so that the water is not renewed sufficiently often, 
then the eels, roach, perch, and pike are apt to accumulate, to the ulti- 
mate extermination of the trout. It becomes necessary, therefore, 
before stocking an old pond, that the water be drawn off and the bottom 
of the pond thoroughly cleaned. The expense of cleaning a pond is 
partially paid by the manure thus obtained. Some persons, after cleans 
ing a pond, sow the bottom with lime and salt. The creek should also 
be cleaned up to its source, by sweeping it with small-meshed nets ; but 
all its shades on the margin of the stream, and its hiding places of 
rocks and stones in the stream, should be left, and pegs or piles driven 
into the bottom, leaving the tops of them a foot or so above the bottom, 
to prevent poachers from netting the pond or stream. The dam 
may or may not be constructed so as to permit the trout to follow 
down the stream to its estuary and return at will. This would 
depend upon agreement between the different owners of the stream. 
But when the stream debouches into a bay or river of salt water, a 
tumbling dam offers an inducement to smelt, herring, &c, to spawn in 
fhe pond, and thus stock it with the best feed possible for trout, for 
.those trout which feed on shrimp, smelt, spearing, young herring, and 
the roe of those fishes, are always superior to such as feed on worms 
brought down the stream by a freshet. Although one of the principal 
charms of the trout is that he feeds on the flies which swarm on the 
surface of the water, thus enlivening and beautifying the water by 
breaking to the surface and forming numerous wakes of large circles, 
and sometimes rising above the surface and disclosing miniature rain- 
bows of amber and gold, yet there are times when he prefers something 
more substantial, and will not touch a fly. In this he imitates humanity, 
which requires roast beef as well as plum pudding and omelette soufflee. 
So the trout requires his piece de resistance of something more substantial 
than flies. 
vol. vi. s 
