The artificial hatching of trout at Mumford, New York, is a sight that is well worth a journey, even from a long distance. The ground occupied is small, only two or three acres, and the building in which the hatching is done is only the size of an ordinary barn, but there is an immense amount of interest concentrated in this small area. There are a dozen or fifteen small ponds, perhaps ten feet square, boarded up on the sides, in which are the various kinds of trout from a year to twelve or fifteen years of age. Brook salmon, California brook, and German trout are the principal kinds raised here. I laid down on a plank that crosses one of the ponds, where the water comes pouring into it, and put my hand down into the water. Probably five hundred of these speckled beauties, the common brook trout, varying from one to two pounds in weight, were struggling to get through the wooden grates into the water above, and they wriggled and twisted through my fingers and bit the flesh as if they resented the interference, but otherwise paid no attention to it. Many would even allow me to take them out and hold them for a few seconds. The water was actually solid with fish, for there were over 3,000 of them in this one pond. Lying on the grass beside another pond in which were some fine specimens of salmon trout, there were within a foot of my hand trout varying from a foot to two feet and a half or three feet in length and weighing from five to eighteen pounds, all lying perfectly still on the bottom, too lazy to stir. Then I went into the building where Jim--everybody knows Jim after one visit--told me how they propagate and care for the millions of tiny things, even selecting individual cases for special care. Half a dozen men were here picking out the poor eggs and doing different kinds of work. The eggs are about half as large as a lead pencil in diameter, and the poor ones are white, the others colorless. In one of the many shallow troughs in the building through which water is constantly running were thousands of eggs spread out just ready to hatch. When they break through the shell the little fish are scarcely longer than the egg itself, which remains attached to them and is finally absorbed. Millions of these eggs, as well as millions of these little trout not an inch long, are annually shipped to all parts of the country. Seth Green came in, and a few minutes' chat with the jovial, gray bearded, two hundred and fifty pound man would make anyone wish to come again and know him better. Then I went out to see them take the spawn. During the spawning season the trout run up a long covered sluiceway at the head of each pond, and a net placed at the lower end of this covered brook catches every fish in it after the boards are removed and the trout driven down with a pole. The men hauled out about a bushel and a half at the first pond and about two bushels at the second, and emptied them into tubs filled with water.