Collecting the Ova. 85 



our way home a regular heavy winter snow- 

 storm was on, and kept on all night. The 

 next morning everything, from the distant 

 hills down to the window-sills, had put on a 

 white nightcap. My friend Eidley examined, 

 with the telescope, from his lawn, the river 

 tumbling over Chollerford dam in the distance, 

 and at once concluded it would not be of the 

 least use to try, certainly not to-day — maybe 

 many days — as all that snow had to melt and 

 come down off the hills into the river in the 

 form of water. ' Besides, Buckland, you're a 

 fortnight or three weeks too late to get the 

 run of spawning salmon off the redds.' ' Yes,' 

 I said, 'I know that; but when Sir Julius 

 and the New Zealanders say, " Go and try," 

 of course I must go and try.' 



"So I packed up, waited half a day at a 

 country railway station, and got that night to 

 Carlisle, to try what my old friends the salmon 

 in the Caldew had to say." 



It is at the coldest time of the year that the 

 spawning takes place, and the necessary work 

 when netting the rivers and manipulating the 

 fish, with the thermometer below freezing 

 point — sometimes up to the armpits in water 



