£42 , APPENDIX. 



successfully manipulated, and the produce are now 

 alive in the boxes. We cannot say what propor- 

 tion of the above were male and female fish, as the 

 milt of one male was used for the ova of two or 

 three females. But the results in living fish show 

 that the operations were successfully performed. 



" It will be observed that towards the end of our 

 operations the fish were getting fast to maturity. 

 From eighteen salmon and twenty-two grilse we 

 had filled our breeding-boxes with 275,000 ova. 

 Immediately after our ponds were filled the rivers 

 came out in great floods, which dispersed the 

 salmon, and, it is feared that, as these floods con- 

 tinue till the end of December, the fine appearance 

 of fish would come to little account when left to all 

 the contingencies of spa^\Tiing in the rivers. The 

 310 fish not spawned would all be ripe within ten 

 days, so that from those left to their natural course 

 there would not have been so many fecundated 

 eggs from the 310 as we have in the breeding- 

 boxes from the forty fish. All these fish were 

 caught on one ford where the Almond joins the 

 Tay. The Almond is a small river where only 

 breeding fish go, and not a clean salmon is got in 

 it during the fishing season. It is only when the 

 river is in flood that the fish when breeding can 

 enter, and it was only about the middle of Decem- 

 ber last year when they did so. After spawning in 

 the Almond they have many perils to encounter, 

 and few of the fry can get down to the Tay by the 

 natural channel of the river, but are forced to come 

 down by an aqueduct which suppUes a number of 

 mills between the river and Perth, and which in 

 summer takes in the whole stream. Therefore all 



