REPORT 
OF TUB 
SALMON COMMISSIONERS OF TASMANIA. 
18 th September, 1807. 
To His Excellency Colonel Thomas Goee Beowne, C.B., Captain- 
General and Qoventor-in-Chief of the Island of Tasmania 
and its Dependencies. 
May it pi.ease youb Excellency. 
In their last Report the Commissioners had the satisfaction of in¬ 
forming Your Excellency that from the last importation of salmon and 
trout ova which arrived at Melbourne from England on hoard the Lin¬ 
colnshire on the 1st of May, 1866, reached Hobart Town by the Victoria 
steamship on the 5th, and on the tith of the same month were safely 
deposited in the ponds at the Plenty, they had succeeded in hatching 
6000 of the former and 1000 of the latter fish. 
They have now the further pleasure of reporting that, during the year 
that has since elapsed, these young iisli have continued to thrive and 
grow in a most satisfactory manner, with a very small amount of 
observed mortality. 
The season is now close at hand when many of these parr will begin 
to assume the garb of smelts, preparatory to their first visit to the salt 
water, when they will he set at large to join their elder relatives now 
in the Derwent, and left to their own resources. 
These older fish set out on then- journey seaward in the month of 
October, 1865 ; and, doubtless, the younger brood will take their depar¬ 
ture about the same period of the present year. 
Of the salmon trout it is proposed to detain a portion in the ponds, 
in the hope that their numbers may be increased by propagation, as the 
Commissioners have been assured on high authority they may be, with¬ 
out visiting tin; salt water. 
But the object which has for some lime past engaged the chief 
attention and occupied the anxious thoughts of the Commissioners has 
been the return of some of the brood of 180-1 from the sea to the 
Derwent. 
The first detachment of these, as has just been mentioned, left the 
ponds in the form of smolts in October, 1865; and, according to the 
opinion of many eminent pisciculturists, a portion of them ought to have 
returned from the sea about the end of the same or the beginning of the 
following year, after an absence of from two to four months. 
Not one, however, as far as the Commissioners are aware, was seen, 
or even reported to have been seen, in the Derwent about that period. 
Upon this merely negative and superficial evidence, however, the 
Commissioners cannot take upon themselves to say that none returned. 
It is quite possible that considerable numbers of them may have been 
present in the river without having been observed by any one; for a 
