182 Transactions. — Zoology. 



Epitome of modern fish culture. — In the year 1763 a German, named 

 Jacobi, has been chronicled as having rediscovered the lost secret — the 

 natural process of fish propagation — as known to Don Pinchon in the 

 fourteenth century. For thirty years, it would appear, Jacobi practised 

 successfully the breeding of fish, by placing the ova of salmon and trout in 

 gravel under water, contained in wooden boxes. In 1834, in Scotland, Mr. 

 Young at Invershin and Mr. Shaw at Drumlaurig began the same artificial 

 process with the salmon, as an experiment to determine (as they did deter- 

 mine) the identity of the parr with the salmon. These experiments, with 

 the subsequent success of the celebrated salmon ponds at Stormontfield on 

 the Eiver Tay (begun November, 1853), may be said to have inaugurated 

 and given that impetus which has set agoing fish-breeding establishments 

 in so many different parts of the world. In the year 1840, Joseph Eemi, a 

 Frenchman living on the Moselle, in ignorance of what had been long 

 known, himself discovered by long and patient watching that the female 

 deposited the eggs and the male fish then impregnated them. The outcome 

 of this was the erection of the well-known French fish hatchery at Huningue, 

 established in August, 1852. Thaddeus Norris in his work on American 

 fish culture gives the year 1864 as that in which salmon and trout were first 

 reared artificially in the United States. This Avas accomplished by Mr. 

 Johnston of New York. Mr. Samuel Wilmot was the first to succeed 

 in hatching out and bringing up to lib. in weight many of the whitefish 

 [Coregoniis albus). This he did in 1867 at his breeding ponds, Newcastle, 

 Ontario, Canada ; and it would appear that Canada took the lead as to time 

 in establishing in America the now great industry of fish hatching. Mr. 

 Wilmot in his report to the Minister of Marine and Fisheries, Ottawa, for 

 1878, says: "Although fish culture was not adopted as a governmental 

 work in any of the States of the Union till after its practical application in 

 Canada, it has nevertheless made prodigious strides since, quite eclipsing in 

 its onward course any other country in the world. At the present time no 

 less than twenty-seven State Legislatures enact laws and grant aid towards 

 the encouragement and advancement of artificial fish culture, etc." 



But a new era in pisciculture has been established, by the successful 

 transport of salmon ova alive from England to Australia, in 1864. This is 

 known as the " Norfolk" shipment, and out of it 3000 young salmon fry 

 were hatched out in Tasmania, on the river Plenty. Many were lost in 

 some unaccountable manner, but eventually 500 were turned into that 

 river. Since then there have been various reports that the Salmo solar had 

 returned from the sea and been identified as grilse. This may or may not 

 be ; but it should be remembered that salmon-trout were also introduced 

 into Tasmania, and ova of the bull-trout f5.<;/7'o.fy appears to have come by 



