290 LITTLE FOLKS 
an inch and a half long, and after a while they grow to look exactly 
like their mother. 
How would you go to work to feed these tiny creatures? The 
men — nurses, arn't they? — feed them on beefs heart chopped fine 
enough to go through a sieve, and when they are bigger, say six 
montns old, they can have different food. So they have curd, and 
what is called the fly-worm. This is got by hanging meat over the 
nursery ; the fly worms fall into the water, and the fish eat them. 
As soon as the fishlets are big enough to take care of them- 
selves, they are put into a pond and left to grow. But the time 
comes, in a year or two, when the fish feels the irresistible impulse 
growing on him, to push out into the world for himself, and they 
will crowd around the gates of their little ponds, till the farmer 
opens them, when out they go to the ocean. 
One curious thing about them, is that they always ccme back 
to their own nursery to make a home for their babies. So when a 
river is exhausted of fish, it is only necessary to hatch out in 
ponds, a lot of fish, and put them into the river. They will go to 
the sea, and when the time comes, they will all come back. So 
the stream will be filled again. 
There are several fish farms in America, and hundreds of 
thousands of fish are put into our rivers every year. 
You can raise fish for yourself, if you like. It is no more 
trouble than to keep gold fish, and a thousand times more interest- 
ing to watch. You can buy the hatching-boxes, or have them made, 
buy the eggs of some professional fish farmer, and start your nur- 
sery. If you have a pond, you can in a year — at small cost — stock 
it with brook trout, the most delicious fish in our country, if not in 
the world. 
Shad, another nice fish, are much less trouble to bring up by 
hand, than trout. 
They hatch out in two or three days, and when three days old 
will take to the middle of a river, and take care of themselves. 
Perhaps the lime will come when we will raise our own fish, as 
we now do our potatoes. 
