186 DR. HOOD PISCICULTUEE IX HEETFOEDSHIRE. 



"water from -wliicli flowed into a large tub. From this tub another 

 pipe carried the water into a series of long boxes, covered at the 

 bottom with fine gravel, on which the ova were deposited. By 

 this simple contrivance the ova were hatched in thousands, but 

 what ultimately became of them we never learned. The boxes 

 were far away from the keeper's house, and they never had that 

 attention paid to them which is so essential to command success. 

 Mr. Frank Buckland suggested to me that it was most probably 

 the result of a raid by a " fresh- water mouse." As I have never 

 seen that animal, I can say no more about it. That this simple 

 method of breeding fish has succeeded in other hands I am 

 well aware, in Hampshire, Surrey, and other counties, where 

 thousands of young trout are reared, and command a high price ; 

 but it cannot compare with such a perfect apparatus as that 

 belonging to my friend, Mr. Jonathan King, and also that em- 

 ployed by Messrs. Ponder and Buckland, at Hampton, consisting 

 of a series of slate troughs, one below another, like the shelves of 

 a greenhouse, the water flowing from one into the other. The 

 great advantage of this construction is that any unfertilised ova 

 can be at once detected and removed from the others, which if 

 they were allowed to remain would injure those near them. 



I need scarcely refer to the numerous salmon river proprietors in 

 Scotland and elsewhere, who have most extensive breeding ap- 

 paratus, which pay well, for it is estimated that not more than 

 one in a thousand of the eggs laid naturally by a salmon ever 

 reaches the adult stage of a fish, from the number of enemies 

 and other causes that are adverse to them. 



To refer to what I have previously mentioned, as to the Colne 

 being a good " feeding" river, I will state a fact that can only be 

 paralleled by the rapid growth of a salmon when it retunis from 

 the sea after its first visit there. Some years ago Mr. Jonathan 

 King gave me some Geneva lake trout, tlie size of small minnows, 

 the ova of which he had procured from Switzerland. I placed 

 these little fish in the Colne. At the end of two years I killed, one 

 afternoon, five of these fish, which weighed 15lbs. — their average 

 weisht thus beincr 3lbs. each. 



