PO TENTIALITIES 3 1 5 



and liberal sums contributed by private individuals, have been expended on the effort to acclima- 

 tise the fish; but still, Tasmania has no salmon. Trout, of both the English and American 

 species, Salmo fario and S. fontinalis , and also the salmon-trout, Salino tnitta, with many in- 

 teresting racial varieties, Tasmania possesses in abundance ; and all of these afford most ex- 

 cellent sport to residents of, and visitors to, the colony. Salino fario, in particular, as established 

 in the inland lakes and larger rivers, has developed in the direction of the form familiarly known 

 in England as the Great Lake Trout, formerly classified as a distinct species, under the title of 

 Salino ferox, and which may scale up to a weight of twenty or even thirty pounds. The true 

 salmon, however, still remains, as heretofore, represented only by its commissioners. 



This disappointing condition of affairs, after the expenditure of thousands of pounds on the im- 

 portation and successful hatching out of millions of ova and fry, is scarcely a satisfaction, and the 

 anomaly for some time seemed to defy discover}-. With some of the latest attempts to bring 

 about a more successful issue of the experiment, the author was intimately associated. In the year 

 1884, a further specially-selected consignment of 130,000 salmon ova was imported to Tasmania 

 per ss. Yeoman, and for their reception the hatching-house on the River Plenty was enlarged and en- 

 tirely remodelled, on a more modern American system, to the author's plans. Over 35,000 healthy 

 fry were raised from this consignment, and, in accordance with the author's recommendations, they 

 were distributed among many of the northern as well as the southern rivers. In the hatchery 

 ponds and in the rivers, the fry throve as heretofore, attained to the parr, and finally to the 

 migratory, smolt condition. Following their natural instincts, they then descended to the sea, 

 but, in place of returning to the rivers the following or succeeding years as grilse or fully- 

 matured salmon, they were entirely lost sight of. Many and various were the interpretations 

 suggested concerning their mysterious disappearance, the most generally accepted one being 

 that, on their arrival in the sea, they were devoured by sharks. A young salmon, however, 

 is probably as well, if not better, able to get out of the way of these sea monsters than the 

 hosts of other fish that abound in the Tasmanian waters ; while the circumstance that the salmon- 

 trout, which is also a migratory fish, goes to sea and returns to the rivers without let or 

 hindrance, is a refutation of this hypothesis. 



The only logical interpretation of the unwelcome fact is, in the author's opinion, associated with 

 the question of temperature. The published isothermal charts, and a temperature record maintained 

 by the author, in association with the marine fish hatchery and ponds established near Hobart, 

 demonstrated that the mean temperature was ten degrees Fahrenheit higher than that of the 

 waters of the British seas ; it corresponded practically with that of the coasts of Spain and the 

 south of France, which lie outside the limits of distribution of the Atlantic salmon It was 

 consequently anticipated that the salmon, on their arrival in the sea, found its temperature too 

 high, and wandered off, and were lost, probably, in the antarctic regions, in search of cooler 

 water. The precisely similar negative results that have attended the experimental acclima- 



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