1 
The Private Fish Pond—A Neglected Resource 
It Is Possible to Establish These at Little Cost, and with the Certainty of Pleasure and Profit 
By C. H. Townsend, Director of the New York Aquarium 
HE possibilities of small fish 
ponds as sources of food for 
the people have received little 
consideration in this country 
and the actual breeding and 
maturing of fishes in such 
ponds is an art which we have 
yet to put in practice. While 
certain foreign countries have long profited by 
the art of private fish culture, and have fur¬ 
nished notable examples, our own facilities for 
this industry have been neglected. It is prob¬ 
able that our resources in this respect are 
greater than those of other countries, as the 
United States already lays claim to the most 
extensive fish cultural operations carried on in 
the world, and nowhere is there so large a body 
of professional fish culturists as that connected 
with our national and state fishery commissions. 
In these times when the value of running 
streams for water power is being widely con¬ 
sidered, the possessors of brooks, springs and 
small lakes should be awakened to the value 
or their home resources for water farming. 
It is gratifying to note that trout culture, in 
the hands of the private citizen, is making some 
progress in Massachusetts and adjacent states, 
ers may today be found in American journals 
devoted to fish and game. Trout culture is, how¬ 
ever, a branch of the work which requires spe¬ 
cial conditions, such as purity of water, com- 
and the advertisements of successful trout rais- 
paratively low temperature, the construction of 
buildings and artificial fertilization. The pos¬ 
sibilities for the private or commercial culture of 
many other kinds of fishes, which are more 
widely distributed than the trouts can be culti¬ 
vated by simpler methods, should receive serious 
consideration. North America is abundantly 
supplied with hardy fishes which are available 
for this purpose. There are no serious diffi¬ 
culties in the way of obtaining them for breed¬ 
ing, and under cultivation they would yield a 
food supply which would supplement to an im¬ 
portant degree that derived from the public 
fisheries. 
My connection with a public aquarium has 
brought me into correspondence with many per¬ 
sons who have desired to undertake the raising 
of fishes, but whose efforts have been limited to 
the mere stocking of natural ponds. Compara¬ 
tively few have realized the necessity of proper 
equipment and actual cultivation, which involve 
the complete control of the waters and of the 
fishes contained therein. Very little can be ac¬ 
complished with a single natural pond; it is 
necessary to have several artificial ponds which 
can be readily controlled, while the various oper¬ 
ations of pond culture, require frequent attention 
and considerable manual labor. 
The requirements for the successful manage¬ 
ment of several kinds of pond fishes have al¬ 
ready been worked out at public fish hatcheries 
