TELEOSTEI 211 



two further importations of ova were received from the home country 

 in 1884. 



In 1895 Mr A. P. O'Calloghan of Timaru caught a fish in the 

 Opihi, which was sent to Dr Giinther, who stated in a letter of 2nd 

 April to Mr H. A. Bruce: 



The fish mentioned in your letter of Jan. 23rd reached me to-day. It is 

 without question a genuine Sea-trout. It is a great beauty and fatter than I 

 have ever seen a Sea-trout or Salmon, showing it must have had abundance 

 of food, and grown up under the most favourable conditions. It has been 

 stated (erroneously in my opinion) that Salmonoids change their specific 

 characteristics when transplanted from the Northern to the Southern 

 Hemisphere. The specimen sent by you is strong evidence that no such 

 change has taken place in your New Zealand Salmonoids. 



In my opinion it is only evidence that the fish was derived from 

 the egg of a pure salmon trout. 



Carp Trout (Great Lake Trout ?) (Salmo trutta, 

 var. lacustris carpione) 



In 1887 the 'Tongariro' brought to Wellington for the New 

 Zealand Government, a large shipment of salmon ova, and along 

 with it 25,000 Rhine brook-trout ova, 25,000 alpine-char ova, and 

 25,000 carpione-trout ova. "The latter is said only to be found in 

 the Lago di Garda." Unfortunately the boxes arrived in very bad 

 order, and no marks were placed on the trays to indicate to which 

 particular kind the ova belonged, and there was nothing to indicate 

 which was which. The societies to which this lot of eggs were given 

 were asked to keep each tray apart, in order that the various kinds 

 of fish might not be mixed. 



The Canterbury Society received 12,000 ova supposed to be of 

 this variety. Only 23 hatched out and all died. 



The Wellington Society received the larger portion of the ship- 

 ment but the eggs were in a very bad condition, and only about 550 

 fry were hatched out. Fifty of these were sent to the Auckland 

 Society for use as a parent stock, but there is no record as to what 

 was done with them. 



About 30 were received by the Otago Society, and were placed 

 in a pond at Opoho. The report for 1892 says: 



These fish are growing, but they produced no ova this year. They do not 

 appear to have settled down to a proper spawning season, as some of them 

 are found to be ripe during the whole year. Some were stripped, but the 

 ova were found to be in a very bad state, and only survived a few minutes. 

 The report for 1893 states that thirteen fish, six years old, and 105, one 

 to two years old, are in the ponds at Opoho. It is not stated where these 

 last came from, and there is no further record. 



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