2 1 8 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



young salmon, they thought it all the same in mixing them together, 

 therefore tbey saw the difference only when the salmon were ripe for 

 the sea. The following season they paid more attention and spawned 

 only salmon, and in the spring every one in the ponds left within two 

 days — not one was .left. The following season they spawned, as for- 

 merly, salmon and also grilse, and next spring again only part wished to 

 get away, proving what I had said. 



The government of New Zealand has ten times asked parties to ob- 

 tain salmon ova and send out to them for their fine rivers in that 

 country. It has cost them thousands, but they never yet received one 

 alive. The government was again thinking of trying to get them out 

 once more when a friend of mine, Mr. Farr, secretary for the Acclima- 

 tion Society of Christchurch, volunteered to come home and see the 

 friends iu England which he had left thirty-five years before, and then 

 to come to Scotland and endeavor to obtain salmon ova. Being in- 

 troduced to the chairman of our fishery board, he got permission to 

 obtain tbem from the river Tay. We went, but we were too late. We 

 could obtain ten females, but we could not obtain one milter. Being 

 too late for the river Tay I then set off for the Tweed, and succeeded iu 

 obtaining over 140,000 fine ova. I then adopted a plan of my own, and 

 instead of at once packing them up for shipment I conveyed them GO 

 miles in jars to my son's trout hatchery atLiulithgow, andlaid them in the 

 troughs until they became eyed; then, instead of packing them up in fog 

 or moss direct from the boxes or troughs, I caused 48 bottles to be made 

 of a flattened shape, and I placed a small tube through the bung or cork, 

 so as to allow bad air out and fresh air in, and in each bottle I put 

 about 4,000 ova, and had these again hung in boxes with the most easy 

 springs I could procure, and by such I was able to convey them 400 miles 

 by railway to Portsmouth without one dozen being killed. 



Mr. Farr then placed them in trays I invented for him — a chest with 

 shallow drawers, into which I make the water to flow from a cistern. 

 It can be regulated as to heat or cold all the way out and the draw or 

 shelf can be examined daily. The drawers are also divided in order to 

 prevent the lurch of the steamer affecting them or disturbing them at 

 all. It will be a wonderful undertaking if such a quantity can be so 

 taken out alive after all their failures. The greater quantities packed 

 before in moss or fog and ice, with the frightful shaking by the railway 

 killed part if not the whole before they even reached the ship. 



A number of gentlemen propose getting up, in a park of 35 acres, a 

 grand international exhibition close to our city. As they have asked me 

 to take charge of the fish department and all concerned, and as I see there 

 is plenty of fine water, I propose to lay out several large ponds and have 

 a large hatchery erected for salmon, grilse, aud trout. I hope to be able 

 every season to stock every river iu Scotland with fry as well as all our 

 burns with trout, at the same time stocking the ponds, say, of a few 

 acres each, with Loch Leven and other trout to allow our youth some 



