spawn for stocking ponds and streams, and hatched four hundred thousand small fry. The stream is a mile long, averaging four rods wide, and from two to six feet in depth, affording eighty barrels of water per second, ranging in temperature, through the ycar, from forty-three to fiftyeight degrees. The water in the spring is at forty-eight degrees. He had in the summer of 1868 nine thousand parent trout, weighing from two to four pounds each, in one pond, seventy-five by thirteen feet, and five feet deep. This pond is supplied by a stream that changes the water every minute. Another pond forty feet square had twenty thousand smaller trout, weighing from one to two pounds each. The water is so clear that all are distinctly visible. Mr. Ainsworth deems the supply of water sufficient to grow millions of trout to perfection.

The Troutdale establishment.-The fish farm of Dr. J. H. Slack, of Troutdale, near Bloomsbury, New Jersey, has ample and well-arranged apparatus for fish-hatching. It is located in the Muskametkony Valley, in Warren County, sixty-four miles northwest from New York City. The "works" cover about two acres, and are supplied by a stream of clear spring water flowing continually at the rate of a thousand gallons per minute. Summer and winter the water reaches the hatching-house at a uniform temperature of about fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The ponds contain, (June, 1868,) beside an ample stock of small fry, about seven hundred adult trout, some of them of three pounds weight. The ponds are three in number, the one nearest the hatching-house prepared for the reception of twenty thousand young trout hatched during the winter; the next assigned to the use of larger specimens not exceeding eight inches in length; the third occupied by the full-grown or well-developed trout. The bottoms of the ponds are of clay, upon which large stones have been placed to enable the fish to free themselves from parasites, animal or vegetable, which cause great debility and mortality, unless by friction the trout can obtain speedy riddance from the troublesome visitors. Large floats, made fast to the banks by wires, afford a grateful and necessary shade. The bottoms of the races are covered with small stones and a layer of fine gravel, and the sides are slated to prevent crumbling of the banks.

The accompanying illustrations represent the Troutdale fish-ponds and hatching house. Dr. Slack regards pisciculture as no longer an experi ment, but as a pursuit quite as certain as agriculture, and at present much more profitable. He describes the process of taking and hatching the eggs. The spawning season, commencing about the middle of October, was indicated by the changing of the bright tints of the female to a sombre hue, the anterior projection of the lower jaw, the distension of her abdomen by the ova, and uneasy movements in seeking suitable gravel beds for the deposition of the spawn. On October 30, fishes were seen in the race busily engaged in forming their nests, by removing the fine gravel from a circle a foot in diameter. Specimens were then taken, and the ova expressed and fertilized in the usual manner. He proceeds:

"After being thus secured the eggs were taken to the hatching-house, which had been made ready for their reception in the following manner: The hatching-trough had been filled to the depth of two inches, with fine gravel, carefully boiled to destroy the eggs of any insects which might have been present; over this a gentle stream of water from the spring, filtered through four screens of fine flannel, was conducted. Upon the gravel the eggs were placed, the greatest care being taken to avoid any sudden jar, as the recently impregnated egg requires the most gentle handling lest suddenly acquired life be as suddenly extinguished. After resting on their new location for a few minutes they were evenly spread

over the bottoms of the troughs by means of a fine feather. During the entire process the eggs had not for an instant been exposed to the atmosphere.

"This process of impregnating and depositing in the hatching-house was repeated semi-daily until January 12, 1868, during which period about seventy-five thousand eggs were taken. Experience shows that from a trout of one pound about one thousand eggs is the average yield; but owing to causes entirely beyond the control of the proprietor, only twenty thousand hatched. The dead eggs were removed daily, being readily distinguished by turning snow-white; these still retaining their vitality resembled small pearls, being translucent and slightly clouded. The first young appeared December 10, forty days after the impregnation of the eggs."

Fish-breeding works at Meredith Village, New Hampshire.-The trout and salmon nurseries and general fish-breeding works of Hoyt & Robinson, at Meredith Village, New Hampshire, present a good example of what may be done in pisciculture with a small but constant stream of uniformly cold water, in a location properly situated. The spring supplying the water gushes in a bold stream from the base of a sharp declivity at the head of a narrow ravine, and is the source of a well-known trout brook, less than a mile in length, discharging into Lake Winnipiseogee.

The ponds are so small and yet so populous with thousands of trout and salmon, that they may well serve to illustrate the wonderful facility with which these fish may be reared, in suitable water, with some attention and feeding. The accompanying wood-cut shows the relative size and form of the ravine itself, the ponds, raceway, &c. The first pond, about the size of a city house-lot, twenty-three by one hundred feet, contains thousands of trout from one to two years old, which, as seen by the writer, sporting in water so clear that every one was visible, and crowding one another in their graceful and constant movements, presented a scene of natural grace and beauty rarely equalled.

The temperature of the water is forty-eight degrees in summer, and forty-five degrees in winter, and the uniformity of temperature is no less remarkable than the purity of the water.

The lowest of the three ponds, which is the largest and deepest, is occupied by the fish of three or four years, weighing from one to three pounds. At a recent inspection, a small dip-net, at a single sweep, while the speckled beauties were competing for an award of minced liver, was seen to rise half filled with a struggling mass of well-grown trout. From this pond a fishway (as shown in the illustration) leads to the brook below, by which many wild trout ascend and fall into a box, from which they are taken and added to the general stock.

Just below the hatching-house, between the first and second ponds, a raceway is adapted to the uses of a fish nursery, and Mr. Robinson has contrived a feeding apparatus which consists of a box, or miniature raceway, in the bottom of which slits of three or four inches in length are cut obliquely through at intervals of a few feet; and through these apertures the food is distributed by a gentle stream of water which is kept constantly flowing through the box. It is curious to observe the young fry, as they frequent the space beneath these apertures, and seize apon every atom of food which falls into the water; even cleaning away the sand and gravel which covers the bottom of the raceway in their competition, in which they imitate the greed and voracity of pigs feeding at a common trough.

Another feature of their establishment is the preparation of artificial

spawning beds, in which the trout may deposit their ova naturally. They consist of a series of screens, the lower one with very fine meshes, the upper with coarser ones covered with clean gravel or small stones. Upon the latter the parent fish make their nests in the spawning season, the female expressing the ova, and the male throwing the milt, just as they are accustomed to work in the natural stream; and the fertilized spawn, falling through the first screen, rests securely upon the second or lower, which is removed to the hatching-house to be watched and waited upon until the hour of hatching arrives.

In 1867 there were hatched here, 10,000 brook trout, 40,000 lake trout, and 5,000 salmon; in 1868, (hatched or eggs sold.) 100,000 brook trout and 46,000 salmon. There are now 20,000 breeding trout in the ponds, from which 1,000,000 small-fry are expected another

season.

Trout breeding at Nashua, New Hampshire.-An experiment in the ar tificial propagation of the trout was undertaken in 1867, by Messrs. George Stark, Edward Spaulding, Charles Williams, and O. H. Phillips, in the interest of practical pisciculture, and with the hope of cheapening a desirable luxury. The location is peculiar. A marshy area of three or four acres is nearly surrounded by an ampitheatre of high hills, from the base of which issue numerous springs of clear cold water, which varies little in temperature during the year, and less, perhaps, in quantity of water discharged in different seasons. These springs, uniting, form a brook of sufficient volume to support naturally a goodly num ber of the finny inhabitants, and a decided reputation as a trout stream, though it is little more than half a mile from its hundred heads to its single mouth, where it embouches into the Nashua.

A dam, three or four feet in height, was thrown across the ravine, and a pond of an acre and a half obtained, five or six feet deep at points of least elevation, but quite shallow in a large portion of its area, and interspersed with growing trees and shrubs and ferns and other forms of vegetation. So equable is the temperature of the water that there is noted a difference of only eight degrees; fifty degrees being the record in summer and forty-two degrees in winter. In this pond were placed five hundred trout; a hatching-house was erected just below, and ten thousand eggs were procured from Seth Green, and placed in the hatching-boxes for the first experiment in November, 1867. The water, before entering the boxes, was filtered through six flannel strainers, (which were washed nearly every day,) and every foreign substance and every decaying egg was removed. The result was successful beyond the expectation of the amateur fish-hatchers. In March, nine thousand small fry appeared, or ninety per cent., from ova brought more than four hundred miles.

While the eggs were being placed in the hatching-boxes, the full-grown trout in the pond above were seeking suitable spawning beds in shoal water in which they deposited their eggs, which were duly fertilized and left to hatch naturally. Early in the season large numbers were observed just from the egg, brisk and vigorous, the yolk sac unabsorbed, and growing to two or three inches in length by the following August. The older trout, fed two or three times a week with fresh liver, appeared to have doubled in weight during the year.

The experiment warranted larger resources, and in 1868 a more spacious house was built, capable of hatching one hundred thousand in a single season. Small tanks or ponds adjacent to the hatching-house are excavated for rearing the small fry, or for keeping the spawners while ripening, by digging away a foot or two of bog earth at the base of the