BASINS FOR THE YOUNG FISH.
GUTTERS FOR HATCHING PURPOSES.
The course of business at Huningue is as follows:—The eggs are brought chiefly from Switzerland and Germany, and embrace those of the various kinds of trout, the Danube and Rhine salmon, and the tender ombre chevalier. People are appointed to capture gravid fish of these various kinds, and having done so to communicate with the authorities at Huningue, who at once send an expert to deprive the fishes of their spawn and bring it to the breeding or store boxes, where it is carefully tended and daily watched till it is ready to be despatched to some district in want of it. The mode of artificial spawning is as follows, and I will suppose the subject operated upon to be a salmon:—Well, first catch your fish; and here I may state that male salmon are a great deal scarcer than female ones, but fortunately one of the former will milt two or even three of the latter, so that the scarcity is not so much felt as it might otherwise be. The fish, then, having been caught, it should be seen, before operating, that the spawn is perfectly matured, and that being the case, the salmon should be held in a large tub, well buried in the water it contains, while the hand is gently passed along its abdomen, when, if the ova be ripe, the eggs will flow out like so many peas. The eggs must be carefully roused or washed, and the water should then be poured off. The male salmon may be then handled in a similar way, the contact of the milt immediately changing the eggs into a brilliant pink colour. After being again washed, the eggs may be ladled out into the breeding-boxes, and safely left to come to maturity in due season. Very great care is necessary in handling the ova. The eggs distributed from Huningue are all carefully examined on their arrival, when the bad ones are thrown out, and those that are good are counted and entered upon the records of the establishment, which are carefully kept. The usual way of ascertaining the quantity is by means of a little stamped measure, which varies according to the particular fish-eggs to be counted. The ova are watched with great care so long as they remain in the boxes at Huningue, and any dust is removed by means of a fine camel-hair brush, and from day to day all the eggs that become addled are removed. The applications to the authorities at Huningue for eggs, both from individuals and associations, are always a great deal more numerous than can be supplied; and before second applications from the same people can be entertained, it is necessary for them to give a detailed account of how their former efforts succeeded. The eggs, when sent away, are nicely packed in boxes among wet moss, and they suffer very little injury if there be no delay in the transit.
ARTIFICIAL MODE OF SPAWNING.
“How about the streams from which the eggs are brought?” I asked. “Does this robbery of the spawn not injure them?”
“Oh, no; we find that it makes no difference whatever. The fish are so enormously fecund that the eggs can be got in any quantity, and no difference be felt in the parent waters; what we obtain here are a mere percentage of the grand totals deposited by the fish.”
Of course, as the operations are pursued over a large district of two countries, no immediate difference will be felt; but how if these Huningue explorateurs go on for years taking away tens of thousands of eggs? Will that not ultimately prove a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul? I know full well that all kinds of fish are enormously prolific, and the reader would see from the figures given in a former section that it is so; but suppose a river, with the breeding power of the Tay, was annually robbed of a few million eggs, the result must some day be a slight difference in the productive power of the water. I would like to know with exactitude if, while the waters of France are being replenished, the rivers in Switzerland and Germany are not beginning to be in their turn impoverished? It surely stands to reason that if the impoverishment of streams resulting from natural causes be aided by the carrying away of the eggs by zealous explorateurs, they must become in a short time almost totally barren of fish. The best plan, in my opinion, is for each river to have its own breeding-ponds on the plan of those of Stormontfield on the river Tay which I will by and by describe.[1]