THE SALMON FAMILY 73 



and every now and then he is induced to take the 

 " worm." It is possible that the movements of the fly 

 and the worms, once having arrested the attention of 

 the salmon, remind him of some many limbed crustacean 

 in the sea*. 



I stated at the beginning of the chapter that attempts 

 to introduce the Atlantic salmon into Australian waters 

 had failed in consequence of the fact that when the fish 

 went to sea they never again returned. 



Another attempt is now being made, and recently 

 my friend, Mr. Richmond, of the Surrey Trout Farm 

 and United Fisheries Company, has sent out one million 

 salmon eggs to the Antipodes. Mr. Richmond gave me 

 such an interesting account of how the eggs were col- 

 lected and dispatched that I will try and reproduce it 

 as far as possible in his own words. 



It is no easy task to collect and transmit in a single 

 consignment, one million salmon eggs. The first difficulty 

 is that all the eggs have to be collected about the same 

 time, or those collected at an earlier date would be 

 hatching out before the eggs collected at a later date 

 were ready to start on their long journey. 



In our capricious English climate the movements of 

 salmon are extremely uncertain ; snow may chill the 

 water and stop the fish travelling up, or droughts may 

 prevent them ascending the rapids. Finally, it may be 

 impossible to net the fish on account of continued floods. 



The egg of the salmon is about the size of a large 

 pea ; it is translucent and usually of a deep cornelian 



