FISH CITL.I. U
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR:1
Si,—In the Spectator of June 14th you draw attention most usefully to the vast uncultivated waste of water, both fresh and salt, in these islands. In Germany to-day there is hardly a pool, however insignificant, but is stocked with the fish suited to it. The Government popularises fish culture by exhibitions of hatcheries in the Zoological Gardens at Dresden, Frankfort, and elsewhere, and also by public lectures. At Wittingau, in Bohemia, Prince Schwartzenberg is said to spend annually a quarter of a million florins on food for his carp ponds. In the German system the carp pond is dried every third year, and the residual fertilisers result in an immense yield of vegetables. In the United States the Department of Fisheries conveyed both the shad and the striped bass from the Atlantic to the waters of the Pacific. The Report of the Department for 1896 (p. 141) states that " the aggregate expense of introducing these fish to the Pacific Coast was under 5,000 dollars; the market value to the fishermen of the Pacific Coast of these fish taken between 1888 and 1896 was about 192,000 dollars." When in Washington this year I called with a friend upon Professor Smith at the Department of Fisheries, and he informed us that it cost the Department at their Pacific nurseries a dollar per thousand to "strip," hatch, and rear for six months young salmon ; that at Clackamas, on the Columbia, they had marked five thousand " fingerlings " by shaving off the adipose dorsal fin with a razor ; that the third and fourth year after four hundred and twenty-five of these marked smolts bad returned from the ocean and had been captured of an aggregate weight of over ten thousand pounds. I am glad you draw attention to that splendid visitor from California, the rainbow trout; there is no fish so easy to rear, so rapid in growth, and so adaptable. The rainbow, unlike any other of the Salmonidae, thrives in lakes and ponds where the summer temperature even rises to eighty degrees.—I am, Sir, &c., MORETON FEE WEN. 25 Ckesham Place, S.W.
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