38 THE NEW AKT OF BREEDING FISH. 



Consequently, in 1837, Mr. John Shaw* took 

 in the river Nith, in Scotland, a male and female 

 salmon, at the moment the two fish were preparing 

 the hed of stones in which to deposit their spawn, ■ 

 and dug along the shore a ditch into which he turned 

 a current from the stream, and put in it an earthen 

 pot ; then having expressed from the female the 

 eggs into this pot, he expressed fi-om the male the 

 milt into the current flowing over the pot, into 

 which the fecundating particles were carried, and 

 the eggs impregnated. 



The eggs thus fecundated were carried to one of 

 the basins he had had prepared for hatching them 

 and preserving the young. There they were depo- 

 sited on a bed of stones, under a fell of water from 

 a little canal ; and after an incubation, which, owing 

 to the low temperature of the water, lasted a hun- 

 dred and ten days, the young salmon broke their 

 shells. They were still preserved where they were 

 born, and thrived so well that eighteen months af- 

 terwards the males of this brood were capable of 

 reproduction, as was proved by a number of expe- 

 riments, fecundating with their milt the spawn of 

 full-grown female fish taken from the river. 



In 1841, Mr. Boccius, a civil engineer of Ham- 

 mersmith, carried to still greater lengths practical 

 results of such experiments. He, like those who 

 preceded him, made use of artificial fecundation for 



* Hxp. Ob. on the develop, and growth of Salmon fry. Edin- 

 burgh, 1840. 



