Unpromising as all this is, however, for a good crop of trout in the natural way, it is only the beginning of the trouble. The danger of disease or physical injury is always present. Heavy rains come and foul the water; when this settles the silt or sediment covers the whole batch of eggs, and smothers the life out of them. Conferva makes its appearance and soon spreads from one to another killing all it touches, and seems to be contagious, as a single dead egg will affect all those which are near it till the infection spreads through the entire heap. Accident or a great flood may even disturb the whole and leave the displaced eggs to perish miserably wherever they may be carried by the water. Amid such vicissitudes the wonder is not that so many perish but that any survive, and the need of nature's superfluity is thus made manifest. Exposed to all these dangers the eggs of the salmonidoe must remain in their natural defencelessness for from two to five months, according to the temperature of the water. A very large percentage fail to become impregnated, the current of water probably washing away the milt of the male before the sperms could enter the eggs. Mr. Livingston Stone says that in digging up some spawn of the California salmon, deposited by the parents in the natural manner, in the McCloud river, he found only eight per cent. vitalized!.

When the little embryo of piscatory life has manfully braved these perils and has escaped from his shell, he is still by no means through his troubles. In the first place, his physical conformation is much against him ; he is encumbered by a belly which would do credit to any alderman. In fact, the belly is the larger part of him, and, unlike that of his political prototype this impediment does not represent so many fat capons and good dinners which have been duly eaten and enjoyed, but represents a certain number of dinners for the future. For almost thirty days after birth the salmon or trout eats nothing but is sustained by the absorption of this stomach or what is more accurately termed the umbilical sac. All this while as may be readily understood, he is awkward and hampered in his movements, an easy prey to any hungry enemy. Appreciating his position he strives to hide himself during this period ; he crawls into holes and under stones, and often hides so effectually that when he has been artificially hatched his anxious foster father the breeder, never discovers what has became of him unless his breeding troughs are well made and free from worm holes. But in this, his hour of weakness his enemies never desert him, they stand by him from first to last. At that stage of his development every miserable shiner, dace and minnow is his master, a very great despair by comparison with his feebleness. Cruelly is the superiority exercised, for mercy does not exist in the watery kingdom. The predaceous insects are also on the alert doubly gratified at his increased size, and epidemics attack him more severely than ever, and sweep away thousands.

These are the perils which surround our coming fish on his way to development. In the natural method they all have full scope and free exercise. Is it astonishing then that not more than one in a thousand ever reach a marketable size or attain the dignity of itself being a father or mother 1 Moreover, at this point man steps in to help along the ruinous process. He has no use for the minnows, nor the merciless insects, nor the many worthless varieties of creatures which play such havoc, but he takes the best the water affords. The magnificent salmon in all the silvery glories of the sea, amid whose caves of coral and pearl he has been gathering size and splendor; or the soft skinned trout, as delicate of color as the finest tints of the artist's brush, and as soft to the touch as the finest velvet; or the monster salmo amethystus, the Mackinaw salmon of Lake Superior; or the white fish, whose silvery scales shine like burnished silver. Man takes the best and so upsets the equipoise of nature, which up to that time had by its checks and balances kept all varieties of living creatures at an established relative proportion. For every salmon he eats there are ten thousand fewer eggs for the water bugs and the minnows who will make up the loss out of those which are left. These embodiments of evil must be fed and grow more diligent in the search for food, the scarcer it becomes, still man keeps on with net, and spear, and hook, making yearly larger drafts as the human race increases and extending his machinery as the prey diminishes; so the whole system of nature is disarranged. The edible fishes at first diminish, then, as the process goes on in geometrical ratio they decrease more rapidly, and the operation becomes accelerated at every step, till the stream or lake which once abounded with excellent fish is utterly and absolutely denuded and left sterile, bare and unproductive. The insects have devoured the last edible fish which man's greediness had failed to reach. This has happened with so many of the ponds and water courses of our country that it is safe to say, fully one-half of the lakes, rivers and streams throughout the older states, at least, yield nothing of food for man.

Such a result is no trivial injury to the community. The vast extent of these sketches of water are but little understood by the people at large. There are in the State of New York alone 647 lakes, with an area of 466.457 acres, besides countless smaller ponds, and miles of river and stream. Fully a quarter of a million of acres of the public patrimony are thus allowed to go to ruin and decay for the want of proper knowledge and a little care. It would have been easy to have protected them ; it is a far more serious matter to restore their ancient productiveness.

The sea fisheries are scarcely better off. Professor Spencer F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, was appointed, under a law of Congress, Commissioner to examine into the condition of the National fisheries and the cause of the diminution of their yield. The fact of "diminution" is the present point on which Professor Baird says, his observations having been made on the Coast of New England : "The evidence of the most deplorable decrease in the supply of fish is only too clear; and so greatly and rapidly has this occurred, that fishing stations which in 1860 produced thousands of fish, now furnish only hundreds, or at that ratio, giving a diminution of quite nine-tenths and often more."