74 



The Country Gcntlaiians Magazine 



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SALMON AND TROUT BREEDING. 



WRITING in Land and Water, Mr 

 Frank Buckland says : — 

 The fish breeding season is now consider- 

 ably advanced, and " turning out time " has 

 arrived. The sahnon, trout, charr, &:c., 

 hatched out in my museum, have now quite 

 absorbed their umbiUcal bags, and have been 

 feeding for the last fortnight. Moreover, 

 they are beginning to die in their troughs. 

 This is a certain test that they require thin- 

 ning and feeding. I have therefore sent 

 several thousand fish to my friend Ponder, 

 who has placed them in the nursery, close to 

 Sunbury lock, the use of which has been so 

 kindly afforded to Mr Ponder and myself by 

 the Thames Conservancy Board. These 

 fish will eventually be turned out into the 

 Thames. 



For my own part I am trying a new experi- 

 ment. I have taken all the minnows away 

 out of my two lower tanks, where the water 

 is about I foot deep, and have transferred 

 the trout and charr to one compartment, the 

 salmon to another, and the Coquet bull 

 trout to a third, and there they can be seen 

 as thick as tadpoles. These fish are as yet 

 very tiny little things, but they are growing 

 fast in their new places of abode. The little 

 salmon have already tried to go up my minia- 

 ture salmon ladder, and every morning 

 several of them are found in the upper and 

 middle steps. Talk of education, why these 

 little fellows who begin to ascend ladders 

 when babies, will surely be able to "lead the 

 way " for the projanum vulgus who have not 

 been proj^erly educated in ladder-jumping in 

 the Science and Art Department. 



The great difficulty in artificial fish culture 

 is to rear the fish to say i inch long. I 

 believe the mistake has hitherto been to turn 



them into too large places ; anyhow we shall 

 now see whether my doctrine be correct, viz., 

 that when their umbilical bags are quite gone 

 the fish should be transferred to a larger 

 tank — not an out-of-door stream — my tank is 

 made of zinc, about 8 feet long and 4 wide — 

 and " hand-fed " for at least another month 

 or six weeks. Mr Edon, the attendant, has 

 observed that the little fish will feed as their 

 provender falls towards the bottom, and then 

 they leave it alone. If, however, the gravel 

 be stirred, they will run to the place where 

 the cloud is, and pick up the little floating 

 bits. I also give the fish plenty of little red 

 worms, i.e., the worms that give the red 

 colour to the mud on the banks of the 

 Thames. These worms are always wriggling 

 about, and attract the notice of the fish ; 

 moreover, they are kind enough, apparently, 

 not to mind being eaten up a bit at a time. 

 The charr sent me by Mr Parnaby have done 

 exceedingly well, and I propose to send a lot 

 of them to Windsor for the Obelisk Lake in 

 the Windsor Great Park. The few charr that 

 survived out of the lot sent by Mr Bennet, 

 of Christiana, have also done well, but I am 

 sorry to say that the "landlocked" salmon 

 trout, and white fish from America, given 

 me by Mr Parnaby, have come to grief. 

 They hatched out and then died. 



I am more and more convinced that the 

 in-door system of breeding is far more satis- 

 factory than the out-door system. The Duke 

 of Sutherland has adopted it, and Mr Dunbar, 

 who has undertaken the management, reports 

 a good crop of fish this year. The Duke's 

 secretary, Mr Wright, has been good enough 

 to send me the following report : — Our young 

 salmon look in first rate order ; scarcely any 

 die. I examined all the breeding-troughs 



