FECUNDATING THE OVA OF THE SALMONIDiE, ETC. 79 



the ^ York Herald,' and which refer to the views and experi- 

 ment of ^ Dr. Robertson, in Scotland, as given to the world, in 

 the * Perth Courier,' in April of the present year. 



" I will fii-st read the account of Dr. Robertson's experiment, 

 because the concluding portion of Mr. Isaac Fisher's letter will 

 then be more easily understood. 



" ' EXPERIMENT IN THE PROPAGATION OF FISH. 



" 'We understand that Dr. Robertson, of Dunkeld, questioning 

 the popular idea as to the natural history of fish, which is, that 

 the male and female meet on the redd or spawning bed, for the 

 purpose of each depositing its roe and milt in the channel — and 

 conceiving, on the contrary, that the ova of the female were im- 

 pregnated previous to their development within the body of the 

 fish — in order to test this theory, took a number of live female 

 Trout from the spawning bed, and having extracted the roe, depo- 

 sited them in a perforated zinc box, containing also some gravel. 

 All these, upon the 14:th of October last, were placed in a running 

 stream ; and on examining the box last week, several of the ova 

 were found to be hatched, of which a sjDecimen may be seen by 

 any one taking an interest in the matter. The proof of this will 

 completely do away with the trouble of obtaining the milt to 

 apply to the roe, as is done by the French fishermen, and estab- 

 lishes a theory strongly advocated by Mr. T. Stoddard. From 

 the severity of the winter the whole of the ova are not yet 

 hatched, but a sufficiency are to prove the truth of this theory. 

 We understand that the Doctor is preparing a detailed account 

 of the experiment, which will appear soon.' * 



" Mr. Isaac Fisher's letter, dated May 3, and published in the 

 * York Herald,' May 14, 1853, ends thus: — 'I beg, in conclu- 

 sion, to caution your readers against what I consider an incorrect 

 statement in a Scotch paper of last April, which informs us that 

 a Dr. Robertson, in Scotland, had taken some roe from a female 

 Salmon (Trout J. H.) without milting it, and that it had produced 

 the fry. Sir J. Hawkins, in his edition of Walton and Cotton, 

 supports this view, and quotes from the Phil. Trans, of 1754, 



* From the " Perth Courier," April, 1853. 

 VOL. III. PT. II. K 



