24 An Angler's Paradise. 



step in and take the matter in hand with regard to some of our 

 marine and anadromous fishes, or else by suitable laws make the 

 way easy for private individuals to do so. The third part of the 

 prophecy is now being fulfilled, and the time will soon be when 

 it will be said that fish culture is " a great boon to the public in 

 general." 



It was this meeting with Buckland, coupled with a great love 

 for Nature, and a strong desire to make its study of some 

 practical use to myself and to my fellow-men, that first set me to 

 work hatching fish ova. The first experiments were tried in a 

 small apparatus rigged up over the water tank in my father's 

 conservatory, and which resulted in trout being grown to a 

 quarter of a pound in a cellar close by, and the subsequent 

 erection of a small hatchery in his grounds, where trout ova were 

 successfully dealt with, and the fish reared for several years. 

 Finding this place and its water supply too small, a site was 

 finally selected, in the year 1868, among the Cumberland 

 mountains, for the first real hatchery ever erected in this country 

 on commercial principles. The work at this, the Troutdale 

 Hatchery was, owing to the nature of the surroundings, only 

 carried on upon what would be considered now a very limited 

 scale, and for twelve years under considerable difficulties, my time 

 being closely occupied more than a hundred miles away, and it 

 was only an occasional visit that I could give to the fishery and its 

 work. In 1880, I was liberated in an unexpected manner, to 

 carry on and devote my whole energy to the work, and I have 

 now the satisfaction of looking upon a most successful issue to 

 my labours. 



In the working of the establishment in Borrowdale, among 

 the Cumberland mountains, I was assisted by the late John 

 Parnaby, of Rothwell Haigh, in Yorkshire, who had just returned 

 from Canada, where he had for some years been engaged in fish- 

 cultural work under the Canadian Government. His experience 

 was considerable, and coupled with my own knowledge of the 

 subject, and a love of the work, we soon had a good stock of fish. 

 Parnaby made several voyages to America, for the purpose of 

 increasing his practical knowledge of fish culture, and of bringing 

 to this country some of the more valuable food fishes of that 



