73 



months efforts, even of the most ravenous appetite. As 

 with the shad, it is probable that the females develop ova 

 a year later than the males possess milt. 



Mr. Wilmot the able and experienced fish cnlturist of 

 Canada, who has devoted much attention to the breeding 

 of salmon and has made many valuable and instructive 

 experiments, asserts that salmon need not visit the fresh 

 water, but will mature their eggs if they are confined 

 entirely to salt water. This discovery if sustained by 

 fuller investigation, would save expense and facilitate 

 operations, and in order not to do him injustice, we quote 

 his language as used before the meeting of the Fish Cul- 

 tural Association in 1878. without however, endorsing 

 his views from our own knowledge. 



" I should feel inclined to give you some experiments 

 I was engaged in last year with regard to the new mode 

 of retaining fish in salt water. The eggs matured equally 

 well in salt water as in fresh. Of course it is well under- 

 stood that for many years back, in fact for centuries, 

 naturalists have held that there was a necessity for salmon 

 to go to fresh water to mature their eggs. Last season I 

 was under the impression that the eggs of the salmon 

 would mature if kept in salt water as well as in fresh, 

 and in order to illustrate that, I instructed one of my 

 assistants to retain in the salt-water pond a few parent 

 salmon, while I put the rest in fresh-water ponds ; and 

 he did so, and took the eggs from them at the same time. 

 There was no perceptible difference noticed in the hatch- 

 ing of the eggs from those fish last year. That being 

 sufficient for me to go upon, this season I retained fifty 

 or sixty salmon in the salt-water pond. The eggs matured 

 just as well as those of the fish in the fresh water. They 

 were manipulated, and showed as much vitality and lite 

 as those in the fresh water. They were hatched in fresh 

 water, but the fish were kept in the salt-water cove." 



