355 
time that I have observed the crossing of the species in a state 
of nature.” He watched it a quarter of an hour (Field, 
January 9th, 1886). 
To partially solve some, at least, of these questions, Sir James 
Maitland, Bart., F.L.S. and F.Z.8., has at Howietoun, devoted a 
very great amount of trouble, and gone to considerable expense 
during the last eight years or more,and when carrying out his ex- 
periments has given me the opportunity of being present while 
the crosses were being made, permitted me unlimited access to his 
hatching-houses and fish ponds, and supplied me with specimens 
whenever I have required them. Consequently, unless other- 
wise expressed, all the following experiments were made by the 
owner himself at his private fish farm at Howietoun. 
As regards obtaining conclusive evidence that hybrids can 
occur, fish culture affords that, and also proof that they are not 
necessarily sterile. Of these we may decidedly recognize some 
forms by their colours and vomerine teeth, &c., as those between 
trout and American char, one of which, as I have already ob- 
served, I received in 1882 from Sir Pryse Pryse, of Gogerdan, 
in Cardiganshire. 
In the following I have merely given a synopsis of some of 
the Howietoun experiments upon hybridizing salmonide, as 
detailed accounts will be found in the Field, and the Proceedings 
of the Zoological Society of London, and my recent work upon 
British and Irish Salmonide, where many more instances of 
intercrossing are recorded. 
On November 25th, 1879, a man arrived at Howietoun with 
some salmon milt which Mr Napier, the local inspector of 
fisheries, had despatched the previous evening from Stirling in 
a tightly corked soda-water bottle, that had been kept during 
the night in snow, and which seemed on arrival as if it had 
been frozen. This milt was employed for fertilizing ova taken 
from a four-year-old Lochleven trout, and a few of the progeny 
were successfully reared: November 14th, 1882 one, eleven 
inches long, was taken in my presence; it was a male which I 
described in the P.Z.S., 1882, and likewise gave a woodcut of 
its head. Some of these fish when young were placed in the island 
