CULTURE OF THE SALMON. 123 



and sets the pail aside for awhile, when the water is poured 

 off and fresh water substituted ; after renewing it a second, 

 and it may be a third time, the eggs are ready to be placed 

 in the hatching-boxes. It is estimated that the female 

 salmon has about a thousand eggs to each pound of her 

 weight, therefore the ova from fifteen fish of twenty pounds, 

 or twenty of fifteen pounds, or thirty of ten pounds, will 

 give three hundred thousand eggs. 



When this fish factory was first established, the single 

 pond could only be stocked alternate years, from the fact 

 that part of the fry became smolts the second, and the 

 remaining portion the third year. The latter of course 

 would destroy the brood of young fish if turned into the 

 pond from the hatching-boxes. This led to the construc- 

 tion of the second pond for the accommodation of the parr 

 that remained until the third summer, so that the produc- 

 tion of fry can be increased from three hundred thousand 

 every alternate year, to three hundred and fifty thousand 

 every year. 



From the information I can gain as to the loss of sal- 

 mon-eggs in incubation, it is about ten per cent, in Scot- 

 land and Ireland, and more than double of that at Hun- 

 ingue. 



One of the consequences of the operations at Stor- 

 montfield, up to 1865, was an increase of ten per cent, 

 in the number of salmon taken in the Tay, and, of 

 course, a corresponding increase in the rental of its 

 fisheries. It has also opened the eyes of owners and 

 lessees of fisheries on this and other rivers, to the availa- 



