110 SMALL HATCHING APPARATUS. [CHAP. in. 



can examine them day by day and note how they progress, and 

 in due time observe the development of the fish for a few days. 

 The young animals can only be kept in the saucer about ten 

 or twelve days, and should then be placed in a larger vessel 

 or be thrown into a river. 



As regards England, I should like to see one of the great 

 rivers of that country turned into a gigantic salmon " manu- 

 factory." Ponds might be readily constructed on one or two 

 places of the Severn, or on some of the other suitable salmon 

 streams of England or Wales, capable of turning out a million 

 fish per annum, and at a comparatively trifling cost. The for- 

 mation of the ponds would be the chief expense ; a couple of 

 men could watch and feed the fry with the greatest ease. The 

 size adopted might be three times that of the ponds on the 

 river Tay, and the original cost of these was less than 500. 

 I would humbly submit that the ponds should be constructed 

 after the manner of the plan I have elsewhere given. Except 

 by the protecting of the spawn and the young fish from their 

 numerous enemies, there is no way of meeting the present 

 great demand for salmon, which, when in season, is in the 

 aggregate of greater value than the best butchers' meat. The 

 salmon is an excellent fish to work with in a piscicultural 

 sense, because it is large enough to bear a good deal of handling, 

 and it is very accessible to the operations of mankind, because 

 of the instinct which leads it to spawn in the fresh water in- 

 stead of the sea. It is only such a fish as this monarch of the 

 brook that would individually pay for artificial breeding, for, 

 having a high money value as an animal, it is clear that 

 salmon-culture would in time become as good a way of 

 making money as cattle-feeding or sheep-rearing. 



There are waste places in England the Essex marshes, 

 for instance, or the fens of Norfolk where it would be profit- 

 able to cultivate eels or other fish after the manner of the in- 

 habitants of Comacchio. I observed lately some details of a 



