184 APPENDIX. 



Melbourne, 26th May, 1864. 



My DEAE YoxiL, 



The salmon is safe, and your statue is secure. 

 It will be erected over the future fish-market in 

 Hobart Town, and you are to be in the attitude of 

 the Medicean Venus, with a salmon instead of a 

 dolphin. 



Ours are hatching out, a hurricane — about thirty 

 or forty a day. We have had great mortality 

 amongst the ova, arising, as we believe, from un- 

 impregnation or injury on the voyage. Nothing 

 could have worked better than our arrangements. 

 Our little fish, now about 150 or 160, are very 

 strong and healthy, rapidly absorbing their um- 

 bilical apparatus, and we have not lost one. We 

 hope for a good many more births, and calculate 

 upon between 200 and 300 fish. I think Dr. 

 Officer rather over-estimates their probable num- 

 bers. My own idea is that they will get 5000 or 

 6000 which will do the work. 



At any rate you may congratulate yourself upon 

 a brilliant triumph, and the fact that you have not 

 lived in vain. 



My eyes are failing me, and I cannot wi'ite long 

 letters. Indeed I ought not to write this. But still 

 my heart is in the cause ; and even with one foot 

 in the grave and the other in a pan of salmon ova, 

 I say hurrah for the principle, and three cheers 



