rods.  At right angles with this stream, there are twenty-five wooden boxes side by side, about fifty feet in length, placed on a slight decline.  These boxes or troughs, each about two feet wide and one foot deep, are divided into partitions by cross-boards, which do not reach, within a few inches, the top of the siding, so that the water shall make a continuous surface the whole length of the trough.  Each trough is filled with round river stones or pebbles washed clean, on which the spawn is laid.  The water is let out of the mill-race upon these troughs through a wire-cloth filter, covering them about two inches deep above the stones.  At the bottom, a lateral channel or race, running at right angles to the troughs, conducts the waste water in a rapid, bubbling stream down into the feeding-pond, which covers the space of about one-fifth of an acre, close to the river, with which it is connected by a narrow race gated also with a wire-cloth, to prevent the little living mites from being carried off before their time.

This may serve to give the reader some approximate idea of the construction of the fish-fold.  The next process is the stocking it with the breeding ewes of the sea and river.  The female salmon is caught in the spawning season with a net, and the ova are expressed from her by passing the hand gently down the body, when she is again put into the river to go on her way.  The manager told me that they generally reckoned upon a thousand eggs to a pound of the salmon caught.  Thus fourteen good-sized fish would stock the twenty-five troughs.  When hatched, the little things run down into the race-way, which carries them into the feeding-pond.  Here they are fed twice daily, with five pounds of beef’s liver pulverised.  They remain in this water-yard from April to autumn, when the gate is raised and they are let out into the river.  And it is a very singular and interesting fact that those only go which have got their sea-coats on them, or have reached the “smolt” character.  The smaller fry remain in the pond until, as it has been said in higher circles of society, their beards are grown, or, in their case, until their scales are grown, to fit them for the rough and tumble of salt-water life.

The growth of the little bull-headed mites, after being turned into the river-pasture, is wonderful—­more rapid than that of lambs of the Southdown breed.  The keeper had marked some of them, on letting them out, by clipping the dorsal fin.  On being caught six or eight months afterward, they weighed from five to seven pounds against half a pound each when sent forth to take care of themselves.  The proprietors of the fisheries defray the expense of this breeding establishment, being taxed only twopence in the pound of their rental.  This, of course, they get back with large interest and profit from the tenant-farmers of the river.  As a proof of the enhanced production of the Tay fisheries under this cultivation the fact will suffice, that they now rent for 14,000 pounds a year against 11,000 pounds under the old system.