1864.] ON PISCICULTURE. 135 



they can be operated upon just as well as though an express mes- 

 senger had been sent many hundred miles to do it. 



Those who have experienced the sad disappointments that I 

 have had with eggs sent even from short distances, and supposed 

 to have been properly operated on, which arrive quite hard, white^ 

 and opaque, and, of course dead (the cause of this being generally 

 the shaking of the railway, or bad packing), can appreciate the 

 immense advantage of operating on dead fish. Now if we never 

 unpack the eggs at all, and leave them as nature has herself 

 arranged, then we shall have more chances of success than by the 

 clumsy attempts of human hands to send them in a tin or glass 

 vessel. The only objection to the plan is that the parent fish are 

 of a necessity destroyed, which is not the case when they are 

 treated in the usual manner. 



I have often been asked if operating on fish and taking their 

 eggs from them killed them ? My answer is that we have this year 

 taken over one hundred thousand trout-eggs, and have not killed, 

 to my knowledge, one single fish, male or female. Those gentle- 

 men, therefore, who have been good enough to allow us to operate 

 on their fish,^ whether salmon or trout, need not be in the least 

 fear that any injury has been done to the fish, who, for aught I 

 know to the contrary, may really feel much obliged to us for the 

 trouble we have saved them of making their nests and depositing 

 their eggs. 



It has been objected by some that these experiments with dead 

 fish, and with milt and ova taken from fish, and kept separate many 

 hours, have been tried before. In the Field of Feb. 27, 1864, 

 '' the Chronicler " quotes from M. Coste, the eminent and learned 

 professor of embryology in the Colleiie de France, a statement that 

 milt will remain alive for twenty-four hours. I have however 

 carried my experiments further on this point, and have ascertained, 

 through the kindness of my friend Mr. H. B. Hancock, that 

 the spermatozoa in the fish would live for so long a period as 

 141 hours, that is to say, nearly six days. It must however be 

 remarked that both M. Costt- and myself have separately come to 

 the same conclusion, viz., that water must not be added to the 

 dead fish till the moment that it is required for use, for it appears 



* There is a special clause in the Act of Parliament which does 

 away with the illegality of taking spawning-fish with the net for the 

 6ona^<ie purpose of obtaining their eggs for the purposes of pisciculture. 



