Actuaries, Institute of Assurance Magazine, No. 51. 8vo. 1863. Agricultural Society of England, Royal-Journal, Vol. XXIV. Part 1. 8vo. 1863. Anthropological Society of London-Introductory Address, by James Hunt, Ph.D. the President. 8vo. 1863. Astronomical Society, Royal-Monthly Notices, Feb. 1863. 8vo. Calvert, Dr. F. Crace, F.R.S. (the Author)-Lectures on Coal-Tar Colours. (K 89) 8vo. 1863. Chemical Society-Quarterly Journal, New Series, No. 3. 8vo. Athenæum for March, 1863. 4to. 4to. Engineer for March, 1863. fol. Horological Journal, No. 55. 4to. 1863 Practical Mechanics' Journal for March, 1863. 4to. Technologist for March, 1863. 8vo. Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania.-Journal, No. 446. 8vo. 1863. Hamilton, Sir Charles, Bart. C.B. M.R.I.-Sir W. H. Holmes on Free Cotton: with a Map of British Guiana. (K 89) 8vo. 1863. Horticultural Society, Royal-Proceedings, 1863, No. 3. 8vo. Linnean Society-Proceedings, No. 25. 8vo. 1863. Newton, Messrs.-London Journal (New Series) for March, 1863. 8vo. Petermann, A. Esq. (the Editor)-Mittheilungen aus dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie. No. 2. 1863. 4to. Philadelphia, Academy of Natural Sciences-Proceedings. 1862. No. 7-12. 8vo. Royal Society of London-Proceedings, No. 54. 8vo. 1863. Tyndall, Professor J. F.R.S. M.R I. (the Author)-Heat considered as a Mode of Motion: being a Course of Twelve Lectures delivered in 1862. 16to. 1862. Official Illustrated Catalogue of the International Exhibition of London, 1862. 4 vols. 8vo. 1862. Vereins zur Beförderung des Gewerbfleisses in Preussen-Verhandlungen, Nov. Dec. 1862. 4to. WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, Friday, April 17, 1863. THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND, K.G. F.R.S. President, in the Chair. FRANK BUCKLAND, Esq. M.A. On the Culture of Fish. AFTER some introductory remarks on the growing importance of the subject, the speaker proceeded to lay before his audience a series of facts, obtained by close observation, which promise to become the cause of the origin or increase of revenue to private individuals, and a source of national wealth.* A good barn-door fowl produces about 120 eggs in a year. The following table gives the result of Mr. Buckland's own observations on The hard roe is composed of the eggs; the soft roe is the milt of the fish. The eggs are very closely packed together, somewhat • Mr. Buckland's entire Discourse, with Additions and an Appendix, has been published, under the title of " Fish Hatching," by Mr. Tinsley, price 5s. Trout, like salmon, carry, on an average, 1000 eggs to every pound of their weight; but this rule does not apply to trout under a pound. Again, as regards other fish, the heavier they are the more eggs they carry.-From a specimen of the Lophius Piscatorius (the angler-fish) sent to him from Brighton in February, 1862, Mr. Buckland obtained a substance resembling a ribbon 6 yards in length, thickly studded with ova, about the size of turnip-seed-from which billions of angler-fish might have been produced. The number of young oysters on the shell of the old one at spawning time is estimated at 1,800,000. resembling figs in a box. The colour of the eggs varies, some being white and others of a splendid coral-red colour; all equally good. The eggs are exceedingly hard and tough, and very elastic; which prevents them from being crushed or otherwise injured. How the Fish deposits her Spawn.-Birds build with twigs and other vegetable material. The salmon and trout can make no use of these materials, so they deposit their eggs among stones. Other fish, especially sea-fish, make use of vegetable material; either, as in the case of the stickle-back, building a true nest, or else depositing the eggs upon the fronds and leaves of the plants, somewhat after the manner of insects. When the fish (the salmon and trout) are about to spawn, they choose, above all places, a shallow gravel bottom; the reason being that there shall be a more rapid flow of water, and hence a greater supply of oxygen to the eggs themselves and also to the young ones when born. The most natural breeding-grounds for the salmon are small, rapid, mountain streams, deep pools being in the neighbourhood, wherein they can rest and take shelter. They, doubtless, ought to have pools; because a salmon does not deposit her ova at one and the same time, but at intervals. During these intervals she drops back into the pool, and recruits her strength for further operations. From this we may learn much as regards the increase of salmon by natural means. One knows the salmon's nest by observing in the bed of the river a hillock, or mound of gravel, about a wheelbarrow full, and a hollow sort of ditch in front of it, as though some one had been scraping it up with his heel. At the spawning season the male salmon has an enormous beak, a huge finger-like projection at the top of his lower jaw. [Two preparations of this were shown to demonstrate this fact; and also a coloured diagram, carefully drawn from nature, by Mr. Jennins.] This beak is not bony, but a mass of purely cartilaginous growth from the bone below. It disappears, moreover, when the salmon is not breeding. Mr. Buckland concludes that it is simply an offensive and defensive weapon, and is analogous to the horn of the deer. * Enemies of Ova.-1. Accidents at the time of spawning. Many of the eggs do not get properly impregnated at the time of spawning, or not being caught by the gravel, are washed away constantly by the stream. Then down come the floods and overwhelm the nests with mud and rubbish, or else sweep them bodily away, level to the bed of * This is the meaning of the salmon making such vigorous efforts to get up from the sea to the higher waters. Instinct seems to tell them that the young will die in shallow water; they therefore make superpiscine efforts to get up cataracts and waterfalls, and attain the shallow brooks. Give them free passage up, and protect them when there, and they will increase and multiply exceedingly. Mr. Ashworth, in a letter to Mr. Buckland, says :-" We find, and I have seen it, that the smallest streams of pure water are the safest, the most productive, and the very places selected by the parent fish for depositing their ova; and if protected for two months in the winter (December and January), any river may be made productive in which the weirs are made passable by ladders, and all natural and insurmountable obstructions, such as rocks, and cascades, and falls, are made accessible, and in which the waters are the purest." the river. Here is a case in point :-Mr. Buist wrote in 'The Field,' March, 1863, "From eighteen salmon and twenty-grilse we had filled our breeding-boxes with 275,000 ova. Immediately after our ponds were filled the rivers came out in great floods, which dispersed the salmon, and, it is feared, that as these floods continue till the end of December, the fine appearance of fish would come to little account when left to all the contingencies of spawning in the rivers. The 310 fish not spawned would all be ripe within ten days, so that from those left to their natural course there would not have been so many fecundated eggs from the 310 as we have in the breeding-boxes from the forty fish. All these fish were caught on one ford where the Almond joins the Tay." Then again we have droughts; and the nests made when the water is high become bare and exposed to the air when the water goes down; either the eggs die from this cause, or else the young when hatched out, having no water, "refuse to exist." Great destruction of spawning fish is also caused by mill-wheels. 2. Fish eat the eggs; and these not only minor fish, but trout, who wait below the nest and scramble for the eggs. Mr. Buckland has himself taken trout eggs from a trout's mouth. Mr. Ashworth states that he has taken no less than 500 peas (fish eggs) from the maw of one trout. He placed these by themselves in a hatching-box, and most of them in due time produced young fish. Salmon, too, will eat their own eggs, and we used formerly to see salmon ova, preserved in salt, sold at the fishing-tackle shops for bait. This mode of fishing is so deadly, that it is now made illegal. 3. Other enemies of fish are water-insects innumerable, especially the water-shrimp, the caddis-worm, the larva of the May-fly, the dragonfly, &c. Messrs. Ashworth, of Galway, report that in one year 70,000 salmon ova, deposited by them in a pure stream adjoining a plantation of fir-trees, were entirely destroyed by the larva of the May-fly. 4. Human poachers.-At the time of spawning, the salmon or trout, usually as wild as a fox, becomes as tame as a barn-door fowl, and any little boy walking by the side of the stream can kill them with a stick; they become the easy prey of the poachers, and millions of their eggs are destroyed which would otherwise have been deposited. Tons weight are at this time captured and sent to Paris. These fish are poisonous to Englishmen. Mr. Ashworth's head-bailiff once ate a portion of one, and in consequence was made so ill that he was confined to his bed for two days, and he was a strong, powerful, healthy man. The British Fisheries Preservation Association are doing their best, by appeals and representations to Government authorities, both in England and France, to stop this destructive export of spawning fish. 5. Birds, &c.-Mr. Buckland brought forward strong evidence to prove that the Water-ouzel and Dab-chick were rather the friends than the enemies of fish-culture, since they feed on the larva of insects. House-rats will greedily devour the ova, and will go into the water to get at them; and it is said that the water-shrew eats the ova; his teeth are insectivorous, but still he may eat fish-eggs. Swans are most destructive, particularly in ponds. In the river Thames, they do incalculable mischief to the fisheries, gobbling up the newly-laid spawn with their long beaks and spoon-like bills. Common ducks do the same. Mr. Buckland's directions for successful FISH-CULTURE are here given in detail :— On the Protection of the Eggs, and Hatching them by Artificial Means. Instead of allowing the ova to be deposited in the natural nest, we catch the fish in a net, we take the eggs from her, we treat them in the manner which was first discovered by two poor fishermen (honour to their memory) and afterwards developed by M. Coste, professor of embryology at Paris. We have to provide an artificial nest, and an artificial mother. The former consists of gravel placed in a narrow box, either of wood, earthenware, or zinc; the latter consists of a stream of shallow water, which shall be running night and day. It A model of the boxes used by Mr. Ashworth was exhibited. was made of elm, oak, or deal, and six feet long, eight inches deep, twelve inches wide, an enlarged mignonette box in fact. The two requisites are a running stream and shallow water. You must fix the box according to your locality. You can place it either in a narrow, fast-running ditch which you know will never fail you, or, better still, place it near a spring where you can regulate the flow of water by means of hatches, large or small. You must guard both the entrance and the exit of the box with a bit of perforated zinc, the holes of which must be sufficiently large not to obstruct the current of water; and you should also have a plate of perforated zinc fixed in any convenient place, a foot or two above the box, to stop the scum, &c., of the water. Above this may be placed an extra sentry, viz. a new birch-broom; saw off the handle close to the twigs, and fix it with the loose ends of the twigs pointing up stream. These twigs will catch the weeds and other mess that comes down with the water. The cleaner the water you pass into the eggs, the better for them. You should have wire covers, which can be padlocked to the boxes, to keep out the shrewmice and rats, and the fingers of meddling boys; and you should have boards ready to place over these to keep out the light during the incubation of the ova. These boxes may be multiplied ad infinitum, so that the water that passes through No. 1 should fall into No. 2, and so on, like water falling down (only at the ends) from one step of a staircase on to the step below it. The box should be a little inclined, to favour the flow of water; and the water should have a fall from the end of one box into the head of another of a few inches. You must take care so to level and arrange the boxes as that, should the stream from above fail, some water should always be left to cover the eggs. If you have not convenience for placing the boxes in a parallel row, you can place them side by side, at right angles to the stream whence the water is derived, having a hatchway for each. Your boxes being all ready for putting down into the stream, get |