296 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HLST. SOCIETY, Tol. XX J I. 



(the Oreinus fertilized ova) into a hatching box and it was evidently with 

 a new respect that he came some days later to tell me they had all hatched 

 out. Insect life had to be studied in the smaller streamlets and thouf^h 

 some doubtful assets were noted among the fauna such as numerous toads, 

 small leeches, great water beetles and their larvte, a most favourably 

 report was ready long before the first ova had to be shipped. With this 

 Major Godfrey wrote home suggesting that shipment should be made so that 

 the arrival of the consignment might synchronize with the disappearance of 

 snow from the llawalpindi-SrinagarRoad in the spring of 1900, but no special 

 directions were given as to packing and shipping the ova as it was supposed 

 that the Duke of Bedford, or his agent would be in touch with experts in 

 England who had already made similar shipments. This hypothesis 

 however proved wrong and shipment was made by a steamer with no cool 

 room, with the result that the ova perished. Later in the year 1900 Major 

 Godfrey went home on furlough and explained matters, arranging later 

 with His Grace's Agent for a very early shipment of ova from Howietown 

 (the well known trout found in Scotland) to be shipped by a P. & O. Mail 

 Steamer which would reach Bombay in December in time to be forwarded 

 to Srinagar before snow closed the road. This it did, ultimately arriving at 

 my house in Christmas week in charge of Mr. J. Sidgreaves Macdonell who 

 had gone to Bombay to meet the mail steamer. I would like here to record 

 my thanks to the late Capt. Kitchen of the 5th Gurkhas for a diary account 

 of an importation of trout ova made three years previous to this by him for 

 his Regimental Club at Abbottabad. This account contained a useful hint 

 regarding the packing case in which the ova was brought from Bombay. 

 Since then we have found we can work safely with cases considerably less 

 bulky but at that time 1 felt that no risks could be taken. Capt. Kitchen, 

 who hatched out his ova in the swimming bath at Abbottabad was, when 

 he sent me his diary, under the impression that his effort had failed en- 

 tirely, but he afterwards discovered, and wrote me that some of the fish 

 released in the Kalapani had survived and bred there. A subsequent 

 attempt was made by the late Col. Kemhall of the same regiment to 

 re-stock this stream and to stock another river in the same district vpith ova 

 from Kashmir. Possibly some of the trout from these importations still 

 survive. One of my men, sent down two years ago: at the instance of 

 the Deputy Commissioner to make enquiries, reported that he actually saw 

 one and were it not that every Gurkha Sipahi is a poacher at heart and 

 that it seems impossible to control this tendency, I have no doubt than good 

 trout fishing might be established in this district. But to return to our sub- 

 ject, Mr. Macdonell arrived late in the evening and we were busy till nearly 

 midnight washing and transferring the ova to the hatching boxes which 

 were ready in the verandah with pipe water laid on. About 6,000 appeared 

 to be in good condition, a very fair proportion considering that they had 

 travelled from England without any expert in charge, but we found many of 

 these failed to hatch out and the mortality in the alevin and early fry stage 

 was very distressing. The pipe water supply was a fertile source of trouble 

 and had there been more than a thin wooden partition between the head of 

 ray bed and the hatching box, the fate which overtook an ova hatching 

 exhibit (put up by me for the Punjab Exhibition at Lahore in 1911) during a 

 failure of the Municipal Water Supply, might have brought an untimely 

 end to my efforts. As it was the stoppage of the flow at night on several 

 occasions woke me up and men were soon at work carrying water till the 

 pipe supply again came in. In due course the fry stage was reached. 

 Some of the little fishes were then transferred to a fry pond excavated in 

 the compound, where they were hand fed and the remainder to a length of 

 the Gupkar irrigation canal above Harvvan, netted at both ends to prevent 



