8256 



British Association, 



by Thomas Ash worth, of Cheadle. The main objects of this paper were to show the 

 great value of salmon fisheries, how they have been neglected in England, and how 

 they might be improved. The produce of the English fisheries has fallen so low that 

 it has been estimated not to exceed £10,000 per annum, and this including the 

 fisheries of Wales ; while the money value of the Irish, according to the reports of the 

 Commissioners of Fisheries, is nut less than £300,000 yearly : one fishery in Scotland, 

 that of the Duke of Richmond, in the Spey, is said to return to his Grace £12,000 

 annually. The author, in illustration of what may be accomplished for the improve- 

 ment of salmon rivers, describes what has been done at his fishery in Galway, and the 

 results. In the short space of ten years the river has been rendered ten times more 

 productive. During the present season as many as three thousand salmon have been 

 taken with the rod. This preat improvement has been chiefly owing to the great care 

 taken in preserving the streams during the breeding season, at an expenditure of £500, 

 and hy introducing .young salmon, artificially bred, into streams fitted for them, but 

 from which the fish had before been excluded, owing to impediments preventing access 

 from the sea. These impediments have either been removed or avoided by means of 

 ladders so constructed as to render the passage to and from the sea easy. A striking 

 example is given by him of a river in Ireland converted into an excellent salmon river 

 by means of ladders. This river is in county Sligo, the property of Mr. Edward 

 Cooper. The ladders are over a fall of about forty feet. So productive has this river, 

 before barren, become, that in July last as many as a thousand salmon were captured 

 in one week. 



Professor Huxley made some remarks upon the natural history of the herring, and 

 called upon 



Mr. J. M. Mitchell, of Mayville, who read a paper " On the Food of the Herring," 

 in continuation of observations communicated to the Association at Oxford and Man- 

 chester. Mr. Mitchell contended that the herring does not confine itself to one spe- 

 cies of food, but that it feeds upon Crustacea, the youug of other fishes, its own young, 

 ova, worms and flies. 



Dr. John Davy read " Some Observations on the Vitality of Fishes, as tested by 

 increase of temperature." The experiments described by the author were made on 

 eleven different species of fish of our lakes and rivers, of which the several kinds of 

 Salmouidae were of the number. The results were that a temperature of water be- 

 tween eighty and a hundred degrees was fatal to each kind. The Salmonidae were 

 those which were most readily affected by elevation of temperature, the other species 

 bearing it according to their kind somewhat better. The results generally were pointed 

 out as of some interest in relation to the habitats of different kinds of fish, and also as 

 tending to prove that the accounts given by travellers of fishes existing in hot springs 

 are exaggerated, and not founded on accurate observation. 



Dr. John Davy also read " Some Observations on the Coagulation of the Blood in 

 relation to its cause." These observations were chiefly made to test the hypothesis 

 brought forward by Dr. Richardson, that the coagulation of the blood mainly depends 

 on the escape of ammonia. The many results described by the author were opposed 

 to this view. First he showed that blood in its healthiest state contains no appreciable 

 quantity of the volatile alkali ; and, secondly, that ammonia added to the blood in a 

 notable quantity did not arrest the change. Other experiments were described of a 

 confirmatory kind. 



The conclusion finally arrived at was that we are yet ignorant of the cause of the 



