39 



EEPORT OF THE LATE SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT 

 FOR THE INTRODUCTION OF SALMON OVA AND 

 SEA TROUT OVA TO TASMANIA. 



BY M. ALLPORT. 



On the 8tli day of February last the ship Lincolnshire left 

 Plymouth bound for Melbourne, having on board about 

 103,000 salmon and 15,000 sea trout ova stowed in an ice- 

 house of rather larger capacity, but of much the same con- 

 struction as that built in the ship Norfolk for the same pur- 

 pose two years ago. The whole of the arrangements for 

 shipping were superintended by Mr. James A. Youl, who again 

 exhibited the determined zeal upon which so much depended 

 in the former experiment. The method of packing the ova in 

 the boxes, and the boxes in the ice-house, has been so tho- 

 roughly explained to the Fellows of this Society in the account 

 given of the former experiment that I need not again give the 

 details. After a rather long passage of 79 days, the Lincoln- 

 shire arrived in Hobson's Bay, on the 30th of April last, the 

 ova and ice were at once transhipped to the steamship Vic- 

 toria, again most liberally placed at the disposal of the Tas- 

 manian Salmon Commissioners by the Victorian Grovernment, 

 and arrived in the Derwent on the 4th May, and by 8 p.m. on 

 the following day the last of the ova were placed in the hatch- 

 ing boxes at the Plenty, the water, by the help of the remain- 

 ing ice, being reduced to 45 Fahr. 



On the present occasion a large number of the boxes were 

 packed by Mr. Robert Ramsbottom, father of the superinten- 

 dent at the Plenty, the remainder by one of his sons, and by 

 Mr. Thomas Johnston. The boxes packed by Mr. R. Rams- 

 bottom were all marked with his initials in pencil, and were 

 found, on unpacking, to contain a far larger average of living 

 ova than the others, though some of the latter were in better 

 order than any of those brought by the Norfolk. I was most 

 careful to examine the state of each box I unpacked, and 

 invariably found that in the boxes packed by Mr. R. Rams- 

 bottom there was rather less moss, and that the ova were 

 more evenly distributed through it, being thus kept separate 

 and never gathered into masses as in the others. To these 

 causes I attribute the better average. In this opinion I am 

 fully borne out by my able coadjutors in unpacking, Mr. John 

 Buckland and Mr. W. Ramsbottom. One remarkable fact 

 in the present experiment is the forward state of the larger 

 portion of the ova, the fish being distinctly visible, furnishing 

 abundant proof that the great majority, at any rate, have been 

 successfully impregnated. This is especially observable in 



