1891-9 2]. TWENTY-FOURTH MEETING. 43 
TWENTY-FOURTH MEETING. 
Twenty-fourth Meeting, 30th April, 1892, the President in the chair. 
Donations and Exchanges since last meeting, 45. 
Thomas McCraken and D. W. Beadle were elected members. 
Nominations were made for officers and members of Council for the 
ensuing year. 
The President read a translation from the Italian of the conditions of 
the Bressa Prize. 
A paper by Mr. Richard Nettle on “The Artificial Propagation ot 
Salmon and Trout in Canada,” was presented by the Secretary. The first 
ovarium was constructed in Mr. Nettle’s office in Quebec in 1857. He 
appears to have been very successful in his efforts. In 1862, an enthusi- 
astic fly-fisher told him the River Moisie had increased its output in 
four years from 300 to 800 barrels. Reports from other rivers were 
equally favourable. He mentions an interesting case of gold fish leaping 
out of their division of an aquarium into that of the young salmon and 
devouring them; and another in which ova taken from a trout had 
vivified and hatched out in large numbers. 
A. F. Chamberlain, M.A., Ph.D., read a paper on “Colour Comparisons 
in the Low German Poets.” He discussed the use of colour compari- 
sons by Meyer, Groth, Boysen, Babst, Bornemann, Weber, Ahrens, 
Ernst, Heyse, and other Plattdeutsch poets, paying special attention to 
those who wrote in the Ditmarsch dialect. By “colour comparisons” 
are meant such compounds and similes as correspond to the English :— 
Snow-white, pitch-dark, sky-blue, blood-red, bottle-green, green as grass 
red as a lobster, black as a crow, etc. Individual writers sometimes, 
prefer special forms, such as “rose-red,” “white as chalk.” The users of 
dialect often show their keener insight into nature by the comparisons 
which they employ. Thus we have “green as a beech tree in May,” 
‘eyes blue as the forget-me-nots,” “yellow as the dandelion,” “eyes 
black as currants,’ “white as a birch,’ etc. The presence of certain 
things favours the general use of some one form of comparison more 
than all others. Thus in some districts ‘‘white as a sea-mew,” “white as 
chalk,” “green as grass,” may attain such general acceptance. He also 
referred to and discussed some curious figurative uses of the words for 
colour in the Plattdeutsch languages, such paradoxical forms as rot black 
(“red ink,” literally, “red black”), groen black (“green ink”) occur not 
infrequently. In one dialect witt lachen (“to laugh white”) signifies to 
laugh in a kind or agreeable manner, and in another, gel snacken (“to 
