THE SPAWNING OF FISH. 31 



or fructifying the next year's deposit" Mr. Stod- 

 dart supports this opinion with much ingenuity 

 and force ; but being merely theoretical, it must 

 only be received with caution by those who may 

 be disposed to regard it favourably ; while, like 

 every innovation upon established system, it has 

 not escaped pretty general opposition, nor the 

 severest criticism of opposing writers.* In spite 

 of all this, however, Mr. Stoddart is more than 

 ever convinced of the correctness of his opinion, 

 the result of further observation by himself and 

 others ; and in a private communication with which 

 we have been favoured, he expresses the hope 

 and belief that he shall shortly be enabled to 

 present the public with an overwhelming mass 

 of indisputable evidence in confirmation of his 

 views.f 



* See The North British Review, for May, 1848. 



")* Mr. Stoddart will assuredly fail, if the experiments of 

 Mr. Andrew Young (the well-known manager of the Duke 

 of Sutherland's salmon fisheries), detailed in Ephemera's 

 Booh of the Salmon, were fairly conducted and are faith- 

 fully recorded : " He [Mr. A. Young] "took a female 

 salmon, exuded by manipulation a portion of her ova, and 

 having simply done so, he buried it beneath the gravel of 

 one part of an artificial spawning-pond. From the same 

 salmon he exuded another portion of ova ; but before he 

 covered it over with the gravel of another portion of his 

 spawning-bed, he impregnated it by pressing milt from the 



