AND ANGLING SONGS. 309 



THE TRANSPLANTATION OF FRESH-WATER 

 FISHES. 



IN connexion with pisciculture and the acclimatization of 

 fishes, how best to transmit from place to place, in a live and 

 healthy condition, the finny inhabitants of the lake and river, 

 becomes a question of no little importance. Much practical 

 difficulty, there can be no doubt, was formerly experienced in 

 the stocking of rivers and fish-ponds, arising from the distance 

 which the stock in many instances had to be carried. This 

 difficulty, since the spread of railway communication, has been 

 greatly lessened ; but even the facilities which at present exist 

 for the promulgation, through transference, of our fresh-water 

 fishes, do not abstract from the care and nicety with which the 

 process in question requires in every case to be carried on. It 

 is still a process which, if committed to ignorant or slovenly 

 hands, runs a strong chance of failure, and, as it admits of being 

 conducted on a basis of well-ascertained facts, a notice of these 

 may be found useful. 



The fresh-water fishes belonging to our lakes and rivers, which 

 it is most expedient to cultivate and introduce to a larger area, 

 are, I premise, disproportionally endowed with the life-power, 

 so to call it, which qualifies them for being readily shifted from 

 place to place and planted out as stock. In some of them the 

 various species of the Salmonidce for instance, this capacity is 

 extremely limited, and the subjects of transmission accordingly 

 require, in the course of it, the most careful and judicious treat- 

 ment ; in others, again, it discovers itself to a much fuller extent, 

 and there is less occasion for ceremony. Without descending to 

 the Murcenidce, examples of fishes, so constituted, may be adduced 

 from the carp family ; also from the Pcrcidce and Esocidce, all of 

 which deserve notice. The life of the carp, we have been credi- 



