The following is the best mode of proceeding :-Procure some wide-mouthed bottles, three or four inches high-common picklebottles or tumblers will do very well;-place at the bottom of the bottle or tumbler a layer of fresh moss (this must have been well washed previously), then dip it in clean cold water, and squeeze the superfluous water out, so that the moss shall be wet, but not dripping. Portions of rough sponge, the size of a walnut, well cleaned, are as good packing as moss, and are cleaner (these must also, of course, be damped). Upon the layer of moss deposit a layer of your "eye-showing" eggs, and arrange them so that they shall not touch one another. Place another layer of moss, another layer of eggs, and so on till the bottle is full; but there must be no pressure anywhere. Pour out any water that has collected at the bottom of the bottle, cover the top with a bit of common paper, and stab some holes in it with a penknife. Your bottles being all filled, get a stout but light box-arrange your bottles in it in the most convenient position, and stuff them down quite tight with moss that is dripping wet with water, put the cover on the box and fasten it securely. Then place this box inside another box, leaving about two or three inches of interspace. Fill this up quite tight with wet moss, and send them off by the quickest route of transport to your friend. If possible, give them in charge to a friend, or the guard of the train, and avoid exposing them to heat or to cold. This is the mode used at Huningue with so much success. Directly the eggs are received the moss should be picked out carefully with a pair of forceps, and the eggs placed immediately in the apparatus ready to receive them.

The Young Fish can also be carried long distances, and this is in almost any kind of vessel. It is not necessary to keep these vessels steady; moderate splashing of the water helps to oxygenate it. Change the water as often as you can, say every two or three hours; and if you see the fish getting sickly, blow air into the water by means of a common pair of kitchen bellows, or by means of an ordinary shilling pewter squirt or use the admirable, simple, and inexpensive aërating apparatus sold by Mr. Wright, fishing tackle-maker, of 376, Strand, which the transporters of live-bait for jack-fishing have found so useful.

To show what a great distance young fish will travel, Mr. Buckland stated that he had received a few weeks since some young salmon from Gothenburg, in Sweden. They arrived perfectly sound and well late on Monday evening the 13th. There were twenty-six live fish, and one egg on the point of hatching out. The vessel they came in is simply a gigantic water-bottle. These salmon, though very healthy at first, died away one by one. The heat of the mid-day sun upon the boxes was fatal to them; but they would have lived if they had been placed in better and cooler water.

Great efforts have been made to transport salmon to Australia, and the Australian government has voted large sums of money for this purpose. Mr. Buckland believes the key to success has been dis

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covered at last it is freezing the ova. This is the question of the day in the transport of useful fish for long distances.

What has been done, and what remains to be done.-We must, of course, give preference to the magnificent establishment at Huningue, near Basle, a noble example of what has been already done, by perseverance and energy in a good cause. In this wonderful establishment

the eggs of fish are kept, and advanced in their hatching till they arrive at the period at which they will bear travel. It is by these means that many rivers in France are actually repeopled with fish, employment given to hundreds of poor fishermen, and the food of the people greatly increased. The fish cultivated are as follows:-1. Truite commune. 2. Truite saumonée. 3. Truite grande des lacs. 4. Saumon du Rhin. 5. Ombre chevalier (Charr). 6. Ombre commune (Grayling). 7. Saumon du Danube. 8. Fera. The number of eggs distributed is enormous. In 1861, the total quantity of fish-eggs distributed was sixteen million, four hundred and forty thousand, four hundred.

To several French scientific gentlemen the highest possible praise should be accorded by the English people-especially to M. Coste, who, having arranged a system for the artificial propagation of both marine and fresh-water fish, is, as it were, the father of pisciculture; and to that liberal-minded man, M. Coumes, the engineer of Huningue, who has so liberally distributed many thousand eggs of fish throughout Her Majesty's dominions during the last season, and to whom we owe the greatest acknowledgments, as well as to the French government, which makes distributions of the eggs of the best kinds of fish gratuitously to all the proprietors of rivers in France who will undertake to hatch and protect them, and make a return of the quantity so produced.

In England, Mr. Thomas Ashworth, of Cheadle, Cheshire, and his brother, the owners of the Galway fishery, have literally repeopled with salmon various streams that previously had no salmon in them, as well as a district of their fishery of thirty miles long by ten wide. They have also opened up a great extent of water, viz. a great number of tributary streams from the Claregalway river up as high as Ballyhaunis. Messrs. Ashworth commenced artificial propagation of salmon at Oughterard, in Galway, the same season that the French commenced at Huningue, neither party being aware of what the other was doing at the time. At least 659,000 salmon ova were collected, impregnated, and transported into these rivers, in December, 1861, from the adjoining streams of Claregalway, where the parent fish are found in great abundance.

The total cost of placing 770,000 salmon eggs in the fish nests or hatching boxes, and of transporting the salmon, has been eighteen pounds, in addition to the regular and weekly cost of his staff of waterbailiffs and workmen. The fisheries have benefited by Messrs. Ashworths' exertions to an enormous extent. There are twenty fish now to be seen, where there was one before. The little fish go down to the sea, and come back big fish, good, marketable food.

Scotland also has done much for her fisheries. The establishment

at Stormonfields, on the Tay, is now a household word, and the observations, both practical and scientific, made by Messrs. Buist and Brown, are of the greatest importance.

In regard to the money value of salmon fisheries in the aggregate, it is stated that England produces annually about ten thousand pounds in money value; Scotland nearly half a million of pounds; and Ireland about three hundred thousand pounds annually.*

The extent of rivers in England is much greater than in Ireland, but they do not produce more than about ten thousand pounds per annum. There is a district in Yorkshire about 600 miles of rivers-the river Ouse, the Derwent (72 miles), Swale (71 miles), Ure (61 miles), Wharfe (75 miles), Midd (55 miles), &c. These are all good, pure rivers, with fine mountain streams, and extending over thousands of square miles, and do not produce salmon worth one thousand pounds a year, and are as capable of being cultivated and rendered productive as Messrs. Ashworths' river was when they purchased it, and commenced breeding and protecting the fish. To aid in remedying this deficiency, Mr. Ponder in April last placed in the Thames, near Hampton, 76,000 young fish (viz. 10,000 salmon, 50,000 trout, 3,000 charr, and 13,000 grayling), the ova having been presented by M. Coumes, the engineer of the establishment at Huningue, on behalf of the French government.

Dr. P. L. Sclater and the authorities of the Zoological Society, have devoted the entire end at their aquarium-house at the Gardens to the demonstration of the science of fish-hatching. The apparatus was ably designed and arranged by A. D. Bartlett, Esq., Resident Superintendent of the Gardens, and a great number of fish has been hatched out during the past few months.

What has been done in France may surely be done in England. Many gentlemen have now seen the importance of pisciculture, and have already, at the cost of a few pounds, turned a useless stream of clear running water into a vivifier of thousands of fish. I trust more will imitate them. What we require is a regular Government establishment, as in France, where the art should be carried out and brought to perfection, and eggs distributed to every part of this our own favoured land; this may be done at a comparatively small expense.

I here give a list of those who have constructed fish-hatching boxes, after either Mr. Ponder's or my own plans. His Grace the Duke of Argyll; The Viscount Powerscourt; The Earl of Mountcharles; Lady Dorothy Neville; S. Gurney, Esq., M.P.; Alfred Smee, Esq.; Captain Berkeley, 2nd Life Guards; J. Baker, Esq., of Bayfordbury; J. Hibbert, Esq.; S. Hall, Esq., of Farningham; J. King, Esq., Watford.-[F. B.]

WEEKLY EVENING MEETING,

Friday, April 24, 1863.

THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND, K.G. F.R.S. President, in the Chair.

ALEXANDER S. HERSCHEL, ESQ. B.A.

On Luminous Meteors.

THE term meteoric, from the Greek μerd pov, beyond the boundary, or scope of particular examination, applies to all objects removed from the surface of the Earth. Neither Halos, however, Lightning, nor the Aurora are properly included in the term "Luminous Meteors," since the first are luminous by borrowed light, the second and third undoubted manifestations of electricity. The term is properly confined to the problematical phenomena of shooting stars and fireballs, and the kindred appearances of falling stones or aerolites. The prevalence of electricity in the air presents one among the reputed causes of fireballs and shooting stars, but affords no explanation of the repeated descent of stones from the air of definite and constant lithological structure.

In the year 1752, Franklin in America, and Dalibard in France, extracted electricity from the air, of the same kind as ordinary machines had hitherto supplied for their experiments. The electrical condition of the atmosphere has been studied since that time by De Saussure and other electricians, but without such a complete success as leaves nothing to be desired. Free negative electricity at the surface of the earth, or positive in the highest strata of the air, is supposed to exist permanently, producing by induction discharges of electricity from clouds of a higher to those of a lower level suspended in the air. The calorific and mechanical effects of the flash of lightning can be imitated on the small scale by the electricity of machines. Fulgurites, or lightning tubes of glass powder, have been produced a quarter of an inch in length and upwards. Glass to the thickness of two inches has been pierced by the electric spark, while the dispersion of oxalic acid crystals by the discharge of the Leyden jar exemplifies in a striking manner the explosive suddenness of the elevated temperature. The electrical manifestation of a moving discharge, termed globe lightning, and said to be occasionally observed, has alone defeated the imitative powers of experimenters. This is the only phenomenon upon which an analogy between fireballs or shooting stars and electrical displays in the lower atmosphere has been maintained. Should the fact of its occurrence be proved to satisfaction, and its origin be discovered, the extreme rarity of the air at heights in which meteors exhibit their brightest light forbids the extension of the effect from the region of the clouds to that of almost empty space.

From numerous accounts of fireballs the following appear to be the characteristic features of their appearance. A starlike point, of a saffron or orange hue, moving with moderate speed, increases gradually, or continues to advance for a considerable time with constant lustre. More or less suddenly the point expands with a white or bluish light of great intensity. The expansion may even surpass the apparent diameter of the moon, and the light and colour may become so powerful as to cause a red and dull appearance of that satellite should the meteor pass closely near her disc. In this state the appearance of the meteor is rarely globular; but more commonly kite-shaped or pear-shaped; of a crescent form, followed by a straight or conical protracted train of wings and tongues, or by a single short tail of light, less intense than the crescent portion in advance. In round and oval fireballs an envelope of red sparks occasionally surrounds the head; in all, the largest of the sparks issuing from the rear of the nucleus form a dull-red extension of the tail, and sharing partly in the motion of the meteor, pursue the latter upon the track at various intervals, until the spectacle is past. At other times they form in more or less detached clouds a permanent luminous streak, enduring many minutes, with curious variations of its form, after the disappearance of the meteor. In kiteshaped or crescent-like meteors these parcels and clouds of light are left, with a red glow, by the fading tongues of flame that follow on the head. They never extend widely to the sides, but like the smoke of flame attend sluggishly in the rear of the projectile in a track rarely wider than a single degree of arc.* At the moment of greatest expansion, followers, in the form of flakes and spheres of light, attend in pursuit of the meteor on the tail. The head never divides itself laterally, into parts proceeding far with equal pace and brilliance. Lastly, the brilliant blue hall of a large meteor may vanish without sparks or followers or train of light, but with a tremulous appearance unravels a phosphorescent long-enduring streak of white light, which remains to mark the path in which it moved. Or, in a few meteors of the larger kind, no white or blue focus of the light, but without atmospheric absorption, an orange or red hue is seen in all the parts of the figure just described. Their manner of disappearance is without any fixed rule. Fireballs either pass away gradually as if by the mere effect of distance, or at the moment of greatest expansion break into parcels

"The production, continuance, gradual change of form, and descent and final dissolution of these trails, may be familiarly but correctly illustrated by comparison with the similar succession of phenomena characterising the trail of smoke and soot issuing from the funnel of a steamship during its progress on its course, in which also a rectilinear beam of finely divided solid matter separated from flame and smoke, often several miles in length, becomes a persistent trail and gradually changes into a waved or serpentine form. In many cases the trail of a meteor must have been originally a cylindrical beam, constituted as now explained, having a diameter of many hundred yards, equal to or greater than that of the meteor itself, and a length of many miles, deposited in an inclined direction at heights of some miles above the earth's surface."-Original Note, by E. W. Brayley, Esq., F.R.S., in Phil. Mag.,' 1st ser., vol. lxiv., p. 288 (1824).