ZOOLOGY, 



FISH PRESERVATION AND CULTURE. 



To all interested in the preservation and restocking of our rivers 

 with fish, we commend the following paper, on salmon-breeding and 

 fish-" ways," or " ladders," read before the British Association for* 

 1864, by the well-known English naturalist, Mr. Frank Buckland. 



The author said, Whereas the oyster is stationary, and is treated 

 in its cultivation more like a mineral than an animal, the salmon is 

 literally a vagabond, always on the move, and never remains long 

 together in the same place. Upon this fact depends its preservation 

 and multiplication, in spite of the many difficulties it has to contend 

 with, the greatest enemy being man. Such was the marvellous in- 

 stinct which compelled the salmon to run up from the sea to the ele- 

 vated ground fit for spawning, that the salmon caught at the mouth of the 

 Rhine, and which are sold in the London market, run up that river 

 no less than 630 miles to their spawning-ground, and, of course, 630 

 miles back again. Thus we may fairly conclude that a fish weighing 

 20 pounds has traveled in its journeys up and down the river no less 

 than 6,000 miles. The salmon hatched in the upper waters of the 

 Rhine are caught at Rotterdam, where there are five fishing stations : 

 the annual produce of these fisheries is, at the lowest, 200,000 fish, 

 which, calculated at Is. 6d. per pound, would amount to an immense 

 sum of money. 



He had weighed a salmon in water, and out of water, and found that 

 its specific gravity was such that it could swim through the water with 

 the same ease as a swallow flies through the air. He then gave rea- 

 sons why artifical hatching of salmon should be encouraged. First, 

 because it might be said the salmon did not know their own business, 

 and were very bad nurses, for it had been calculated on excellent data, 

 that out of one thousand young ones only one ever became human 

 food. Salmon made their nests in the gravel one over the other, 

 heaping up immense mounds, so that the bottom eggs would of neces- 

 sity be crushed, and only those near the top ever hatch out. Sec- 

 ondly, there were so many enemies of the salmon, both when in the 

 form of an egg and in the form of a young fish, that they required 

 preservation and careful watching, like young pheasants. Several of 

 these enemies were enumerated, and a good word said for the water 

 ouzel, who eats not the salmon eggs, but the insects that come to feed 



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