24 An Anglers Paradise. 
step in and take the matter in hand with regard to some of our 
marine and anadromous fishes, or else by suitable laws make the 
way easy for private individuals to do so. The third part of the 
prophecy is now being fulfilled, and the time shall soon be when 
it shall be said that fish culture is ‘‘a great boon to the public in 
general.” 
It was this meeting with Buckland, coupled with a great love 
for Nature, and a strong desire to make its study of some 
practical use to myself and to my fellow-men, that first set me to 
work hatching fish ova. The first experiments were tried in a 
small apparatus rigged up over the water tank in my father’s 
conservatory, and which resulted in trout being grown to a 
quarter of a pound in a cellar close by, and the subsequent 
erection of a small hatchery in his grounds, where trout ova was 
successfully dealt with, and the fish reared for several years. 
Finding this place and its water supply too small, a site was 
finally selected, in the year 1868, among the Cumberland 
mountains, for the first real hatchery ever erected in this country 
on commercial principles. The work at this, the Troutdale 
Hatchery was, owing to the nature of the surroundings, only 
carried on upon what would be considered now a very limited 
scale, and for twelve years under considerable difficulties, my time 
being closely occupied more than a hundred miles away, and it 
was only an occasional visit that I could give to the fishery and its 
work. In 1880, I was liberated in an unexpected manner, to 
carry on and devote my whole energy to the work, and I have 
now the satisfaction of looking upon a most successful issue to 
my labours. 
In the working of the establishment in Borrowdale, among 
the Cumberland mountains, I was assisted by the late John 
Parnaby, of Rothwell Haigh, in Yorkshire, who had just returned 
from Canada, where he had for some years been engaged in fish- 
cultural work under the Canadian Government. His experience 
was considerable, and coupled with my own knowledge of the 
subject, and a love of the work, we soon had a good stock of fish. 
Parnaby made several voyages to America, for the purpose of 
increasing his practical knowledge of fish culture, and of bringing 
to this country some of the more valuable food fishes of that 
