4 oS WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
need ever expect to make a more rapid fortune in this business 
than in any other. The same qualities which command success 
in farming or the mechanic arts, will command success in trout- 
culture. He who fails at everything else, will not succeed in rais¬ 
ing fish. It has also been imagined that trout required no feed, 
and many ingenious estimates as to the profits of the business 
have left this item out of account. Now when the time arrives 
that pigs can be fattened without feeding, or calves turned into 
beef without food, then trout may be grown without expense. 
Food they must have in some way. In a natural trout-stream a 
limited number can forage for themselves ; but trout in a pond 
are like cattle in a barn—they must have food furnished to them 
or starve. In other words, fish cannot live on water. 
Another erroneous supposition is that large fish can be easily 
sent alive by express. It is not only exceedingly difficult to send 
large fish alive, but the cost of transportation generally amounts 
to more than the cost of the fish. The fry or young fish can be 
sent by express during cold weather only. Large fish must be 
transported in tanks and have an attendant to change water and 
fee the railroad employes. 
We have purposely refrained from making any estimate of 
profits. It would be possible to set down a very enticing row of 
figures. But so many elements enter into the question of profit, 
that no general estimate would hold good. We know just this 
one thing, that the business has paid us, and paid us better than 
any land-farming we ever heard of in this section of country; and 
if it has paid us, there is no law in this land forbidding one man 
to do as well as another. 
WHITE-FISH. 
The white fish is very justly regarded as standing high in the 
list of valuable food-fishes. So much of the water of the United 
States is adapted to its growth that it would look, at first sight, as 
if the supply could not soon be diminished. A large amount of 
capital is employed in its capture, and a great number of persons 
are dependent for support, directly or indirectly, upon the con¬ 
tinued supply of the fish. A very brief examination of the 
number taken yearly during the last twenty years will satisfy any 
