146 TRANSACTIONS. 
ever put into a river had been about five thousand, which would 
be really nothing, put into the Nith or the Tweed. So we had 
never really tried the fish in rivers. But in ponds and lakes 
where he could be confined he had done remarkably well, and was 
really a great acquisition to our waters. He was lately at a place 
where a number of these fish had been turned in, and found them 
spawning in the race waters at the head of the pond. They had 
grown to a weight of 2 Ibs. or 3 lbs., and were providing not only 
excellent sport but occasionally pleasant change of diet to the 
proprietor. He had also Loch Leven trout, which he could take 
at any time. To have fish thus at command was a very desirable 
thing, and he knew none which would thrive better in small space 
than the American trout. He had reared them in small tanks up 
to a weight of 4 lbs. or 5 Ibs, He found that they bore a higher 
temperature than our trout ; and they had also been acclimatised 
to greater extremities of temperature. 
He believed the time would come, before very long, when every 
country house almost would have its fish pond, and the proprietor 
would be able to send out and have a few fish taken from it, just 
as he sent now to his poultry-yard and had fowls or ducks killed 
for dinner. For years all the energies of fish culturists had been 
devoted to the culture of trout and char, with an occasional 
attempt at the culture of salmon and sea trout, which had been 
greatly retarded by the withholding of proper facilities. But now 
the cultivation of coarse fish was being gone into a good deal. 
One advantage of this would be that this class of fish lived upon a 
vegetable diet much more than the salmonide. These warm water 
fish, or fish like the carp, tench, and others, did very well indeed. 
under cultivation. Some objections had been taken to their 
flavour, and objections which, he believed, had a good deal of 
weight ; but these were entirely got over by simply transferring 
the fish before they were eaten to stews or tanks supplied with 
pure water. Keeping the fish there and feeding them for some 
time, they entirely lost the flavour of weeds and mud, and came 
out perfectly eatable. This was very much more widely known on 
the continent than here. If it were more widely known in this 
country, we might utilise many fish which at present people 
absolutely refused to eat. Mr Armistead next explained a method 
which he followed of rearing little shell fish, crustaceans, and tad- 
poles, to supply food for the fish in the ponds, which was done in 
a semi-natural way over sluices from ponds at a higher level. Fish 
