THE SALMON EXPERIMENT IN TASMANIA. 823 



from the rid has liatclied out ; and an examination of both the eggs and 

 the newly -hatched fry has very materially strengthened the impression 

 in my mind that these fish were salmon, for the eggs were not only larger 

 than any we have yet taken in the colony, but had exactly the pink 

 tinge which characterized the salmon eggs received from England. The 

 umbihcal sac attached to the newly-hatched" fry is longer in proportion 

 to the width than that of the trout, and this was a marked peculiarity 

 in the fry hatched from the imj)orted salmon eggs. It is quite true that 

 there is considerable diversity both in the size and color of the egg& of 

 the brown trout {Salmofario) ; but the size of the eggs in that species 

 by no means depends upon the size of the fish, as large eggs are often 

 found in small fish ; and no cause can yet be assigned for this diversity 

 in size, but the difference in color clearly depends on the quality of the 

 fish, the red-fleshed fish invariably producing red eggs, and the white- 

 fleshed fish the pale straw-colored eggs. As an actual fact, none of the 

 originally imported salmon-trout or trout eggs approached in size either 

 these eggs taken from the rid in the Plenty or the imported salmon 

 eggs ; and very great interest will therefore attach to the subsequent 

 stages of the fry now hatched, because, if they are true emigrants, that 

 fact must be made manifest when the deciduous silvery scales which first 

 hide the parr marks are put on, and the young fish assume the smolt 

 stage, though it may even then (as long since pointed out) be difficult, 

 if not imi30ssible, to determine accurately to which of the two migratory 

 species the smolts may belong. 



A few days after the foregoing was written, namely, on the 15th day 

 of October last, a strong freshet came down the Plenty, during which a 

 school of about a dozen salmonoids found their way into the water- 

 course which supplies the j^onds, being evidently bound seaward. Mr. 

 Read was so much struck with the difference between these fish and 

 trout- fry of the same size that he preserved two of them in spirits and 

 forwarded them to me for examination. Externally, both fish x>i"esented 

 the characteristics of true salmon, and upon dissection the number of 

 pyloric appendages was found to be sixty-two in one and sixty-five in 

 the other — numbers which prove these specimens to have been salmon 

 and not salmon-trout. This capture, therefore, lends additional force to 

 the presumption that the 20-pound fish taken in the Plenty was a salmon. 



