El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1912-08-24

stupefies them and prevents them from
injuring themselves by struggling
Much, it is expected, will be accom-
plished with finny species which, up
to the present time. have never been
subjected to artificial culture. Among
these are the sunfishes, which are
among the best and most widely dis
tributed Of our food fishes. They are
excellent game, and the largest Of
them, commonly known as the blue
gill;" or blue sunfish," attains a
length of about a foot There is good
reason to believe that scientific breed
ing might increase its size to two or
even three feet.
There are more than dozen species
of sunfishes. all of them prominently
adapted to pond culture. All of them
are nest builders, being of the family
Of the BASES. 1t would be easy, there
fore, to cross-breed them, and there is
good reason to suppose that they could
times as much as the largest specimens
do today. Think what has been &C
complished with poultry. Compare the
little Jungle fowl" (from which all
with the huge buff cochin" standing
two feet high. Why should not equally
striking results be obtained by the
scientific breeding of fishes?
Producing Big Perch.
The yellow perch, chiefly a river
fish, might be most profitably devel-
oped by cross breeding. There is no
reason why we should not produce a
race of this species two or three feet
long. Its flesh is delicious, and, thus
magnified in size, it would be most
valuable from a market standpoint
The same might be said of the white
perch, which, though most commonly
found in rivers, does well in land
locked lakes and ponds. There are
small lagos in New England that con-
tain white perch weighing two pounds
apiece.
Plentiful in streams all along the
Atlantic coast Is the "dace"-a game
little fish with scales like FURNISHED
gold It is very good to eat, its only
disadvantage being its small size To
make it bigger, however, is simply a
matter of breeding And the same
thing might be said of many of the
minnows. But there are some species
of Tninnows that are big enough al
ready to be valuable. One of them.
native to some of the Pacific coast
rivers, attains a weight Of so pounds.
and another, the "squawfish," or Sac
ramento pike" is four feet long.
Eels are always scarce in our mar
kets, notwithstanding 2 steady demand
for them. We ought to grow them in
ponds, as they do in Germany. They
offer an excellent means of utilizing
the nutritive material of our inland
waters, their principal food being in
sect larvae, snails. water fleas and bugs
and minnows. To breed them is out
of the question, because they spawn in
the depths of the ocean. but young
ones may be caught in unlimited num-
bers as they run up the streams in the
sprin. Transferred to ponds and fed
they grow rapidly and TO great size
The Germans import millions of the
fry" f~r this purpose from England
and italy. planting them and rearing
them to marketable weight
A fish is an exceedinly plastic" or
ganism-susceptible that is to say OF
extraordinary modification through
breeding. Everybody knows. for in
stance, what the Japanese have done
with the goldfish, which in nature is
a sober-hue and very commonplace
little member of the carp tribe BY
crossing and reerossing they have
caused it to undergo the most surpris-
ing transformations, one of the most