142 SALMON-REARING AT STORMONTFIELD. 



liver. About the end of May they are allowed to enter 

 the rearing pond, which, as Mr Brown maintains, is the 

 most faulty part of the whole plan, being only 223 feet 

 long by 112 feet wide at its broadest part, and far too 

 small to contain and nourish 300,000 fry, which the 

 boxes can hatch : it would require to be four times as 

 large. A second pond is indispensably necessary in 

 order that the breeding may be carried on every year. 

 At present, ova are deposited only every second year ; 

 because, if the fry of this year were introduced into the 

 pond along with those of last year, the younger fish 

 would be preyed on by the older. 



Seeing that the experiment has been so successful as 

 to demonstrate that to be amply remunerative it only 

 requires to be extended, we are at a loss to understand 

 the apathy of the Tay fishing proprietors. Eentals 

 have largely increased of late years, and they seem to 

 be satisfied ; but their doings are not deserving of imi- 

 tation. Wherever salmon-rearing is attempted, let it 

 be on a scale which will yield important results. 



We know of only one instance in which the artifi- 

 cial rearing of salmon has been prosecuted thus. Mr 

 Thomas Ashworth of Poynton, Cheshire, having, along 

 with his brother Mr Edmund Ashworth, purchased the 

 Galway salmon-fishing, extending from Loch Corrib to 

 the sea, resolved in 1852 there to try an experiment in 

 the artificial propagation of the salmon. At the meet- 

 ing of the British Association for the Promotion of 

 Science, which met at Glasgow in 1855, Mr Edmund 

 Ashworth read a paper, in which he stated that the 

 Stormontfield experiment had demonstrated the practi- 

 cability of rearing salmon of marketable value within 

 twenty months from the deposition of the ova. " We 

 are glad to learn," observes Mr Brown, "that Mr Ash- 

 worth is still carrying on his experiments, as this sea- 

 son he has deposited at the least 659,000 salmon ova 

 in the tributary streams of Lochs Mask and Corra, where 

 salmon ova were never seen before, although both these 



