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VOLUNTEER OATS. 
Samples of oats are received from George Clendenin, of Glenwood, D. C., 
four feet six inches in height, and promising to be unusually heavy, which were 
sowed a year ago, and ploughed under in September last, the ground being seeded 
with timothy. They have grown with the timothy, and will probably yield 
a third of a crop of heavy oats. Mr. C. proposes to sow them in the fall, and 
make an attempt for a crop of winter oats. 
‘SALMON PROPAGATION IN AUSTRALIA. 
An interesting experiment in pisciculture has resulted successfully. An at- 
tempt was made to hatch salmon once in Australia, which had been transported 
sixteen thousand miles in ice, and the result after three years of effort and wait- 
ing, by Mr. James Youl, Edward Wilson, and others, is a fine run of veritable 
salmon up the Derwent, and a promise of future abundance for local consump- 
tion and even exportation. The following statement is made by a local paper, 
the Hobart Town Mercury : 
“Tt will be three years next month since the first batch of salmon ova was 
landed on these shores, and the joy that was felt at the discovery that they had 
been landed in a sound and healthy condition will not be soon forgotten. We 
had long been laboring ourselves, and had long had earnest friends at home 
laboring, for the introduction of salmon into our waters, and we look upon this, 
after two or three bitter disappointments, as the first step towards the realiza- 
* tion of our wishes. Still, few were so sanguine as to think the difficulty alto- 
gether surmounted, and the majority of those rejoiced with trembling. They 
said let us see fish hatched from the ova first, and turned out into the Der- 
went next, and we shall then be better satisfied. At length both these con- 
ditions were fulfilled. And then not a few shook their wise heads on hearing 
that the first batch of salmon had been sent out to sea, and said they would 
never come back. ‘They were either to perish for want of suitable food in these 
seas, or were to be destroyed by their natural enemies. But rather less than 
three years has been sufficient to show the groundlessness of these fears.” 
SALMON LADDERS. 
The following plan of a salmon ladder has been exhibited at Bergen, in Nor- 
way, by a Mr. Hetting, and a model was to be exhibited at the Salmon Fishing 
Congress, which was to open on the 7th of the present month in London. The 
troughs connecting with the boxes are twelve feet long, three feet broad, and 
three feet in depth. The resting-boxes are eight feet long, six feet wide, and 
five feet deep. The last debouches into the river against the stream. No water 
is allowed to run through it in winter, thus avoiding the danger of bursting from 
ice. The author of “Sport in Norway,” who communicates the information to 
Mr. Buckland, the English naturalist, says the salmon has been known to leap 
a fall of twenty feet when the water is sufficiently deep to enable them “ to get 
a good spring.” 
HUNGARIAN GRASS, (Panicum Germanicum.) 
The Department of Agriculture having recently sent to the southern and 
southwestern States a quantity of the Hungarian grass seed, and inquiries hav- 
ing been made as to its value, the manner of culture, &c., it has been deemed 
proper to give the information sought. 
