NON-LEGISLATIVE KEMEMES. 225 



by merely reflecting for a moment on the fact (after 

 making all allowance for the number kUled by man), that 

 a fish which multiplies itself eight hundredfold every 

 year is yet saved from rapid dechne only by a great 

 amount of legislative protection and favour. 



What breeding-ponds have already done and have 

 shown can be done, in applying a remedy at this point, is 

 striking. The ova deposited at Stormontfield in the first 

 year (1853) were 300,000 ; the fish hatched and brought 

 up to the migratory age were, according to the best 

 census practicable, about 260,000. In other words, while 

 (accepting Sir Humphry's statement) only one in twepty 

 of the eggs deposited in the natural spawning-beds are 

 hatched, the proportion hatched of those deposited in the 

 artificial ponds is something like nine in ten. Similar 

 results have been obtained at Stormontfield in each year 

 of the last ten, or rather in each alternate year, there 

 having been, until lately, only one pond, and it having 

 for some years been held desirable, owing to the fry of 

 each propagation departing in two diff'erent years, not 

 to introduce a new brood into the pond tiU all of the 

 former brood had departed. By the five or six hatch- 

 ings which have taken place at Stormontfield, nearly 

 a milhon and a half of smolts have been furnished to 

 the Tay, only a small though unascertainable propor- 

 tion of which would have reached that stage had they 

 and their parents been left to the natural or ordinary 

 chances of the open river. It is not practicable to ascertain 

 the extent to which these operations have contributed to 

 the great rise in the produce of the Tay fisheries which 

 has taken place within these few years, for other beneficial 



p 



