184 PROPAGATION OF TROUT IN AMERICA. 
Dubravius, Dr. Lebault, and many piscatorial professors, dwell at 
great length upon preparing fish ponds and taking care of them. We 
therefore extract the gist of their advice, intermingled with our own, 
as follows : A pond intended for either profit or pleasure should be 
cleansed once every three or four years, especially if large compared 
with the stream by which it is fed, or if sustained by more surface water 
than of spring water. It should be drained and lie dry six or twelve 
months, both to kill the water-weeds and the animals which feed on 
trout and its roe. The letting your pond dry, and sowing oats in the 
bottom is also good, for it purifies the bottom of the pond. 
In reconstructing your pond after draining it, and having made the 
earth firm where the head of the pond must be, Lebault advises that you 
drive in two or three rows of oak or elm piles, which should be scorched 
in the fire or half burned before they be driven in the earth, for being 
thus used it preserves them much longer from rotting ; and having done 
so, lay faggots or bavins of smaller wood between them, and then 
earth between and above them ; and then, having first well rammed 
them and the earth, use another pile in like manner as the first were, 
and note that the second pile is to be of or about the same height that 
you intend to make your sluice or flood-gate, or the vent that you 
intend shall convey the overflowings of your pond, or any flood that 
shall threaten to break the pond-dam. Then he advises the planting 
of willows and osiers about the dam, and then cast in charred logs not 
far from the side, as, also, upon the sandy places, in order to protect 
spawning beds and form hiding places for the small fry. All ponds 
should contain places of gravel bottom, and places sandy and shallow 
where trout may disport themselves and burnish their sides. Fish 
should also have retiring places, such as hollow banks, or shelves, or 
roots of trees, to keep them from danger and to shade them at times 
during the day in the extreme heat of Summer, also from the extremity 
of cold in the Winter. If too many trees be growing about your pond, 
the leaves thereof, falling into the water, will so impregnate it as to 
inj ure the flavor of the fish. Although towering trees form too dense a 
shade, and the foliage is bad for the stream, while they yield cover to 
invite winged game and the consequent gunner, and shooting much 
about a fish preserve is injurious, yet we would advise the planting of 
willow and alder to partially shade the stream or pond and render firm 
the shores. 
Two trout ponds are more profitable than one of the same area as the 
two, because they may be cleaned alternately, and the trout turned into 
one while the other is under cleaning process. 
In small ponds, or ponds where the small fry of common fish often 
form food for trout, Lebault advises the feeding of trout by throwing into 
the pond chippings of bread, curds, grains, or the entrails of chickens or 
of any bird or beast you kill to feed yourselves. On the score of feeding 
trout in preserves our experience is that they are generally fed too much 
