ANDREWS ON 6ALM0NID2E. 57 



fine field for our Salmon fisheries and possesses a climate suited to all 

 stages of growth and spawning states. The Trout of the "Wandlc, through 

 the indefatigable exertions of Samuel Gurney, Esq., M. P., have been 

 introduced into some of the streams of that settlement. On the im- 

 pregnation of the ova, the earliest means of transport should he obtained, 

 placing the ova in iced vessels, but with a sufficiency of water to pre- 

 serve the fry on extrication during the voyage. Tanks, kept in a cool 

 part of the ship, should be bedded with gravel, and a species of Chara 

 distributed over the bottom. The Chara will thrive, and keep the water 

 perfectly pure throughout. Into these tanks the fry could be transfer- 

 red, and abundant means of artificial feeding could be managed. It is 

 the impurity of the water that destroys the fry on the passage. The 

 introduction of the Salmon to Australia will be a questionable under- 

 taking. The Salmon is a northern fish, and the temperature of the rivers, 

 and the seas of the coasts, where zoophytes, corallines, and corals of the 

 tropics abound, would not encourage that development and growth of 

 this noble fish which has made it the anxious care of British legislation. 

 Appended to the graphic illustration given by Count Strezlecki, in his 

 "Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Dieman's Land," 

 in which regions the plantain may be seen growing in company with the 

 vine, the apple, the peach, and the English oak, and these again flou- 

 rishing in close vicinity of Eucalypta and Mimosa, and the kangaroo, 

 sheep, emu, and horned cattle, may be seen roaming together in the 

 same tracts, and seeking the same herbage, he yet adds " it will not be 

 so easy to accomplish the sure increase of the Salmon." 



A successful result in carrying out practically such investigations 

 must depend upon the knowledge and experience brought to bear ; for, 

 Sir John Richardson well observes, with reference to the confusion that 

 exists in the knowledge of the peculiarities and habits of the Salmonidse 

 — " The rectification of this confusion is a matter that concerns the le- 

 gislator, as well as the naturalist ; for nothing certain can be learned of 

 the habits of a Trout until we have the means of recognising it in the 

 various stages of growth ; nor without such knowledge can the legis- 

 lative enactments which abound in North America, as well as in Europe, 

 be of much utility, or indeed fail of being actually injurious." And 

 also, as Sir Thomas Judkin Eitzgerald, of Golden Hills, in a recent cor- 

 respondence on the Salmon question, states: — "There is no more diffi- 

 cult subject to treat on than that of the preservation, increase, and na- 

 tural history of the Salmon." 



The meeting then adjourned till May. 



