70 THE OLD BERKS HUNT 



was over it was found that one favourite 

 hound, " Beauty," had escaped by crouching 

 out of sio^ht against the side of the kennel 

 immediately under the gun. She lived an 

 honoured pet for many years, the playmate 

 of the writer's father, and his brothers and 

 sisters. 



At Elsdon, too, besides hunting, Mr. 

 Symonds carried on pisciculture, a science 

 little understood in the early part of the nine- 

 teenth century. A few breeding trout were 

 kept in a small spring with a gravel bottom, 

 which also supplied the house with water by 

 means of a hydraulic ram. It is very rare 

 for trout to breed in a pond in this way, but 

 they invariably did so in this case, and the 

 young fry were turned out into one of three 

 very large pools, made by damming up a 

 stream which ran through the property. In 

 three years' time they attained the weight of 

 two or three pounds, when they were killed 

 and the pool restocked. Mr. Symonds' son, 

 Mr. I. F. Symonds of Okeleigh, inherited the 

 taste for fish breeding, and was one of the 

 first to practise the art of the artificial im- 

 pregnation of the ova of trout and salmon. 

 He worked in conjunction with the late Mr. 

 Frank Buckland, and many of the ova sent 

 by the latter to the antipodes were collected 



