The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-25 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING; JANUARY 25, 1861.

inches, and on May 19, 1855, it was found that por- •
tions of the fry were rapidly assuming the smolt
dress, and were ready to depart from the ponds. The
sluice leading to the Tay was opened, in order to
afford egress, but none of the fish moved away till a
few days afterwards vhen one little shoal that had
detached itself from the general body took
its departure. A rapid series of similar emigra-
tions took place, till it was found that fully ono
half of the fish had left the pond. The other
half, it is curious to know, remained in the parr
state till about the same period next year, when
they also entered the river. Sir William Jardine,
in reporting on these breeding ponds to the British
Association, said of the first year's experiment that
he looked upon it as having been highly successful,
showing the practicability of hatching, rearing,
and maintaining in health a very large number of
young fish for a period of two years, and, not
reckoning the original outlay for the ponds, at a
really trifling cost.
The breeding experiments at Stormontfield, as
well as being a commercial success, so far as they
have been prosecuted, have also served to throw some
additional light on the natural history of the
salmon, and have definitively settled the question
as to the parr being the young of that fish, which
has long been a disputed point with naturalists.
It was the art of pisciculture, whie originally,
long before the Stormont field experiments
were thought off, brought out the fact of the
parr being really the young of the salmon, and not
as was always supposed by many people, a distinct
fish. Various controversies had raged on this point
in the scientific world for a great number of years,
both sides, as is usual in such disputes, considering
themselves in the right. The Ettrick Shepherd was
among the stoutest of the disputants, and asserted
with might and main that a parr was a young sal-
mon ; but it was reserved to Mr. Shaw, forester to
the Duke of Buceleuch at Drumlanrig, to demon-
strate the fact, which he did in a series of experi-
ments, carried out during a period of five years—
viz., from 1833 to 1838. Mr. Young, of Invershin,
manager of the Mike of Sutherland's fisheries, also
became engaged in similar experiments, and the
conclusion arrived at by that gentleman was
that the parr was undoubtedly the young of the
salmon, and that it certainly changed to the
smolt state as Mr. Shaw said—with this differ-
ence, that Mr. Young asserted that the change took
place in one year, while Mr. Shaw maintained that
the parr was two years of age when it became a
smolt. The Stormontfield operations have now
proved both gentlemen to be right and also, in a
sonse, both to be wrong, as it has been shown that
one-half of the parr leaves the pond the first year,
the other half following in a period of 12 months;
and the disputatin may be said to be still carried
on, for we are ii ignorance of any regulating
principle by which the change from parr to smolts
is produced, or to account for the impulse which
impels the fish to proceed to sea the moment they
have assumed the smolt dress.

With the view of determining some of these ano-
malies in the natural history of the salmon which
are still in abeyance, further experiments of a more
elaborate kind than those originally determined on
were instituted at the breeding-ponds. Thus, in
November and December, 1857, provision was made
for hatching in separate compartments the artifi-
cially impregnated ova of-1, parr and salmon ; 2,
grilse and salmon ; 3, grilse pure ; 4, salmon pure. It
was found,when the young of these different matches
came to be examined early in April, 1859, that the
sizes of each kind varied a little. Mr. Buist, the
superintendent cf fisheries, informing us that," Ist,
the produce of tie salmon with salmon are 4 inches
in length; 2d, grilse with salmon, 31 inches; 3d,
grilse with grilse, 31 inches; 4th, parr with grilse,
3 inches; sth, smolt from large pond, 5 inches."
These results of a varied manipulation never got a
fair chance of leing of use as a proof in the dispu-
tation, for owing to the limited extent of the ponds,
the experiments had to be matured in such small
boxes or ponds as evidently tended to stunt the
growth of the fish. Up to the present time we have
not solved the riddle which has so long puzzled our
naturalists in connection with the growth of the
salmon. Anotier idea has also been tested at Stor-
montfield by Nr. Buist. Some theorists supposing
that the salmi ova might be impregnated before it
left the female fish, it was determined to test this.
A box or two were set aside and stocked with ripe
ova direct fron the female fish. The result was
foreseen by al concerned—the whole of these eggs
rotted away.
In consequence of the limited extent of the esta-
blishment at 3tormontfield, it is found to be incon-
venient to stock the boxes annually, as the two-
year-old brool in waiting for the period of exodus
would certainly devour the new-born fry as they
emerged from the egg and were admitted to the
pond. The whole of the experiments conducted on
the Tay have been entirely successful, with the
whichmpanaargtieamllyenftaiilnedt,hiet
exception
supptipoonseodfseason
from lBss,unskilful
manipulation of the graied fish and the severity
of the season. The next hatchings were more
fortunate, and helped to swell the stock of the river.
Mr. Buist, under his piscicultural cognomen of
Peter of the Tools," gives us the following statis-
tics :—" In one of our lines of boxes we deposited
11,000 eggs of a female salmon, impregnated with
the milt of a male grilse, each of the boxes contain-
taing upwards of 1,000 eggs. Of these 11,000 only
about 30 eggs were,addled ; the remainder all pro-
duced living fish, that are now (May 29, 1858) swim-
ming about among the thousands from other boxes.
This certainly is a very gratifying result, as not
one in a hundred of ova deposited in the river by
the salmon themselves comes to life, owing to perils
of floods and droughts and risks of being devoured
by fishes and waterfowls. Here an artificial breed-
ing protects 11,000 of the eggs from one pair of fish
till they become living fry. These will be protected
from the devouring pike and puddock warriors
until ready to go to sea next year and the year
following, while their contemporaries in the river
are all that time subjected to the attacks of the
marauders." In 1857 the total number of eggs
which were laid down was 160,000, nearly all of
which came duly to life, and were in good time
launched on their journey oceanward ; and it is
worthy of remark in connexion with this batch
that the eggs were from 14 grilses and the milt
from 15 salmon.

In order to ascertain at what period the smolts
become grilse, and what percentage of the smolts
come back from their first trip to the salt water, a
system of marking was adopted for the purpose of
arriving at some correct data on these points. The
results, however, have not been quite so satisfactory
as could be wished, some of the plans of marking
failed. The young fish thrives so
adopted having
rapidly that in two months it may grow from a
smolt the size of a man's finger to a fish of 51h or
61b weight: It is obvious therefore that those
marked by the insertion of rings or the cutting off
of any of their fins will soon outgrow all such
marks; when holes are punched in their gill covers
nature soon fills them up ; when the dead fin is cat
the place heals over and leaves no trace of the
mark ; but, in spite of these drawbacks, some
marked smolts have returned to the Tay grown in
the space of a year into the proportions of hand-
some grilses a few pounds in weight. For instance,
of 1,300 smolts marked in 1855 by cutting off the
second dorsal fin 22 were caught and seen by the
superintendent as grilses.
The latest breed (at Stormontfield, the result of
which is not yet determined), is entirely for full
grown salmon, and the backward season has very
greatly retarded their growth. It is pleasant
to know that toe hundreds of thousands of
fish bred in these ponds are already felt as a
makeweight in tle revenue derived from the Tay
fisheries. Rents are again on the rise, so that the
proprietors will in duo time be amply compensated
for the small assessment necessary for the piscicul-
tural operations which have of ;ate years attracted
so much attention at Stormontfield.

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