The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-07

the dark. turn white. the fish life of | the Wyandotte caves in Crawford 1 county being proof of that. The fish, l however. knows how much sunlight he l should have and if he is provided with sunny spots and shady ones, he will devil in them in proper proportion to take c2 the b1autiful tints that he may in truth, gathe~ direct from the sun itself.
 While the fish are passing through their developing staga they are the vic l tims of all kinds of pests-prowlers of the land and of the air. The 'fly-up- the creek" the kingfisher and the snipe are the most common. The kingftsher, the surest in his work, will alight on a dead limb or post ltear pond and keep his eye on the fish until he selects his victim. and then with a dart he is down on if. A number of cranes have also been killed.
 l It is necessary for the gold fish farm CT to have his employees out with shot guns as soon as the bird life is stirring in the morning, and they have to keep Ou duty until the birds have gone to rest at night During the night rae coons, muskrats and wharf rats get ill their work, an dtheir invasion has to be
 met by putting common rat-traps all around the ponds. There are also tur- 1 ties and cray fish that come up from the creek to the ponds.
 Besides these most common pests there are a hundred more that the or dinary person thinks have long since passed out of Indiana. And after they have been enumerated there still re- mains long list of beetles, water Wasps, hellgamites and snake feeders, whose bite or sting is fatal.
 | Though millions of fish are matched annually many are thus extermnated, and those left are by the raisers sorted out until only 100000 perfect fish of salable size are left to put on the mar | ket
 The loss by cold is very small. Gold fish are so hardy that they may be 1 frozen up solidly in a block of ice. and i be saved by thawing the ice slowly with spring water, even after they have remained in the frozen state for two or
 three days.
 It takes three or four years for the ] llSlh lO SCL lilelI SioN tIAs buS tAICJ hlll | live a long time There are fish in the ponds of the Spring Lake fishery that are fifteen years old. and are still spawning, the females continuing at the rate of about 5O,000 eggs year. It | is known that some have lived forty or l fifty years, and some authorities assert that they will live to be one hundred, They grow to a foot in length, and as they grow in proportions, their beauty l increases. There are some goldfish in the spawning ponds that would weigh l almost a pound.
 The world is the Spring lake fishery's market, for the shipments are almost worldwide. There are possibly only four more such institutions in the United States-two in. Ohio, one in Philadelphia and one in Iowa. There seems to be an annual American de- mand fdr about quarter of million pet fish and almost half of the demand ] is met at this point. The fish wholesale at from to 30 cents apiece when bought by the hundred. and MT. Heck Esavs that the annual shipments from 1 this fishery will average $20 hundred. This means that the crop gathered off this twenty -ftve-acre farm is not far short of $20,OOO. gross, annually.
 The cost of production, however, is great. A good-sized country hamlet has grown up around the ponds and all of the houses are occupied by men who are employed in the fishery. The ship ments have to be made by express. which is expensive. Still the net pro- ceeds of the industry are great, but how much no one knows.
 The most expensive pet fish raised is produced here It is called the tele- f scope. To the man who is not a fancier | it is not so pretty as the other larger and more golden ones. It is of bright reddish gold and has large eyes. that in some cases stand out half-inch from Its head This produces the effect of a "big head" and makes it look like a small red catfish It sometimes has a double tail These fish ordinarily
 bring go cents each at wholesale and
 some of them, imported as breeders, have been known to bring S2O0 apiece. The next most expensive gold fish is
 called the comet a beautiful fellow
 that sometimes grows almost foot 1 long and has q tail almost as long as his body. This tail is lace-like, and as
 he passes through the water and the sunlight falls on it, it looks like mist
 of shimmering gold and silver. The l ordinary two-inch comets generally
 command 35 cents each by the hun | dred.
 The Japanese fantails that sell at B cents are also beautiful Their tail is, | in fact, two ar three tails. and the fish
 can spread them out in the shape of a fan that produces brilliant gold effect. }The common gold fish, usually found in small glass globes in houses, generally
 wholesale for $6 to $10 hundred. The
 shners-undevelope fish--sell as low as $3 hundred.
 A great many of the gold fish annual ly sold in the United States are put out
 as premiums. They are placed in little glass globes and are given away by merchants to people who make pur- chases amounting to $t or more. An other great source of distribution is
 through bird stores.
 The fine fish go to aquariums anb to park. Gold fish at the Paris Exposition were from these ponds, as were also most of those at the Worlds Fair in Chicago. Many of the Spring Lake fish Iery products were exhibited in the United States fisheries at Paris. They