Traxsactioks. U5 



been reared by himself, and which weighed 2 lbs. He had seen 

 some thousands or tens of thousands of char taken from that lake, 

 and never yet saw one which would turn the scale at half-a-pound. 

 The common size, he thought, was five to the pound. Although 

 he had heard of much larger fish being taken, they were very rare. 

 These fish could be taken from Windermere, and in a few genera- 

 tions grown to the size of the one exhibited. He had grown them 

 up even to 3 lbs. 



Mr Armistead next alluded to the despatch of salmon ova to the 

 Antipodes from this country by Mr Frank Buckland and :\lr Youl, 

 and also from America, and to the large proportion of loss caused 

 by the hatching of the eggs during the voyage. It had since been 

 discovered that by subjecting them to a low temperature hatchin'^ 

 could be so retarded that they could be kept for a long time. He 

 had himself adopted this process successfully in the case of ova 

 taken from the Nith and exhibited at the Fisheries Exhibition in 

 London. He next spoke of the improved results obtained by 

 hatching the ova on glass grilles, which prevented contact with any 

 deleterious substance, and expressed his preference for either glass 

 or slate over metal, even when varnished. 



Passing on to speak of the American trout, Mr Armistead 

 said this fish was really a char. They had been introduced into 

 this country for about twenty years. He got a considerable supply 

 of ova, and the fish had passed through a great many generations, 

 and been considerably improved in that time. He exhibited a few 

 recently hatched fry, some of the ova, and a bottle containing two 

 little double-headed fry and several others deformed in various 

 ways. Peculiar forms, he exjilained, could be produced by 

 pressure applied to the ova. The two-headed ones were the 

 produce of what might be called double-yoked eggs. The American 

 trout had been a good deal run down by some people ; and one 

 reason for that, he believed, was that wherever he had been put 

 into rivers or lochs from which he could escape, he had done so 

 and gone away to .sea. There they attained to a considerable 

 weight. Instances were recorded of them being taken of eight, 

 ten, and even twelve pounds. The very fact that the fish would 

 leave fresh water and go to sea was one strong proof of its value. 

 One reason why we had been unsuccessful in stocking the laro-e 

 rivers with it was that we had not put in sufficient. In America 

 it was quite a common thing to turn ten or twelve millions into 

 a river in a season. Here, he believed, the largest known stock 



