SELECTION OP FORMS AND LAND-LOCKED SALMON. 



lxxi 



near the mouths of the rivers. The lower proprietors in some places 

 believing that the upper proprietors are helpless do not always listen to 

 their complaints in an amicable manner, considering themselves masters 

 of the situation. But as a knowledge of fish culture extends it will be 

 fouud that, did they know it, exactly the reverse is the case. The upper 

 proprietors might obtain such splendid breeds of trout for their rivers 

 that they would not care to continue preserving the salmon. Or they 

 might introduce a land-locked salmon, or one which does not descend 

 to the sea but passes all its life in fresh water. Or hybrids between 

 the salmon and trout might be sterile and not take on migratory 

 propensities. 



I have shown how by selection of parents larger and more rapidly 

 growing trout can be raised, and these fish, provided they can obtain 

 sufficient food, attain to a size now but seldom seen, but when observed being 

 termed iSahno ferox. Thus eggs sent from small brook trout in Hampshire 

 and Buckinghamshire to New Zealand have developed into 20 lb. and 30 lb. 

 fish. But to obtain these fine breeds great care must be taken- in keeping 

 the parent fish in suitable ponds ; if breeders of different years can intermix 

 then the benefits of age may be lost. Thus it is the finest forms come from 

 seven or eight year old parents, as has been ascertained at Howietoun, where 

 the young the progeny of such are now being kept to be breeders in their 

 turn, and it does not seem an unreasonable expectation to see in a few years 

 such a semi-domesticated breed as these islands have never witnessed, and 

 all this due to the enterprise of a single energetic individual. 



Then there are the so-termed land-locked-salmon, which might prove 

 invaluable to upper riparian proprietors, or those who possess large inland 

 lakes, containing sufficient food for their sustenance, or where descent to the' 

 sea is rendered impossible from any cause. In Maine, in the United States, 

 there is found a variety of the salmon which has taken on a lake-life and is 

 said never descends to the sea ; many of the eggs were sent over last year to 

 this country, and the young reared from them were exhibited in the Fisheries 

 Exhibition. The Canadian Commissioner observed that in some of the rivers 

 of the Dominion of Canada the same variety obtains. From Lake Wenern, 

 in Sweden, a few of these land-locked forms were received at the Fisheries 

 Exhibition, some of which weighed as much as 151b. 



It has been asserted that no salmon in our country has ever developed 

 ova without first descending to the sea. Here, again, facts at Howietoun 

 entirely disprove this assertion. Some young salmon were hatched in March, 

 1881, and in. December, 1883, while still in the ponds some females were 

 found with ova, and one on being removed in August, 1884, had numerous 

 large eggs. These, being bred from, may form the nucleus, after one or 

 two generations, of a land-locked race. 



