In order to hatch salmon it is necessary to have ponds where they can be retained till they are ripe after they appear in the spring, although as they are migratory, it is impossible to keep them throughout the year. The pond must be larger than for trout with a larger brook or race connected with it. Salmon will even seek the outlet to spawn. They may be captured in nets from the brook if there is no race, or a net may be attached across a salmon river and the fish ponded below it. They are manipulated precisely like trout, and the eggs hatched in the same way. The young, after they are turned loose, which must be done in the upper waters of the salmon rivers - as they live in the strong current, they will themselves seek the smaller tributaries - remain in fresh water for one or two years. The California salmon that were allowed to escape in Caledonia brook because there was no demand for them in the State of New York, remained there tor one year, and until the second summer after the winter in which they were hatched, when they all disappeared never to return. They evidently started to go to the sea, but as they had to pass over the falls of the Genesee which are some ninety six feet in height, they may not have got there and they certainly never got back. They had attained a length of about six inches and were a beautiful fish, bright, lively, quick, and of fine game qualities, for their size. If they were retained in fresh water by proper screens, and if the supply horn California were to be relied upon as permanent, they would be suitable for stocking private preserves and would furnish excellent sport. They will probably not attain their full size in confinement, not over a few pounds, and those that have been turned loose in the waters of our State and left to their own free wills have disappeared never to be seen again. They may come back and we hope they will, but as salmon were never indigenous to the Hudson river or any river South of it on the Atlantic coast, there is no certainty of their adapting themselves to their new quarters and furnishing us with breeding fish on our coast.

It is alleged that the salmon of California all die after breeding. ' This, if true, is most unusual and unnatural, and does not accord with their great abundance in the Columbia, the McCloud and the other rivers of the Pacific coast. A portion of them undoubtedly do so, as their journey from the sea is a long and exhausting one, but many others no doubt escape observation and lingering along, gradually recovering from the labors of parturition, straggle back at all seasons of the year to the ocean their home of health, food and recovery. It is hardly to be supposed that the operations of the United States Commission in collecting the eggs of the California salmon can be long continued. Either the McCloud river will be exhausted by the excessive drain upon it or the Commission will be satisfied with the results of the experiment. It was probably not intended to establish the operation as a permanent undertaking. Enough salmon have been sent to the Eastern States to fairly test the question, whether their streams are adapted to the residence of these fish, and if success ensues, the efforts of the Commission will be more than rewarded, while if failure shall occur there will be no reason for further drafts upon waters in which salmo quinnat has his natural home. It is, therefore, questionable whether private fish preserves can be supplied from this source either through national or individual enterprise.

There is diversity of opinion as to the time when salmon go to the sea, and the length of time they remain there before they return. Of European and Eastern salmon it has been supposed that about one-half go to the sea in the Fall one year and a half after they were hatched and the others a year later, but some fish cul-turists contend that they all remain for two years, and others say they all go the very year of their birth. We know that California salmon which were hatched in November remained through the Spring and Summer and until the Summer following, and then disappeared substantially together. We can not tell where they went nor what they did, for we did not go with them.

It is said the European salmon returns six months later, and in the spring following his descent when he weighed a few ounces, in the shape of a grilse or young male salmon just arriving at the age of puberty of as many pounds as he formerly weighed ounces. That he again goes to the sea in the fall and the following spring reappears as a full grown salmon of eight or ten pounds. The better opinion would seem however, to allow them rather more time to attain such ample dimensions, as an increase from ounces to pounds is almost too much for six months efforts, even of the most ravenous appetite. As with the shad, it is probable that the females develop ova a year later than the males possess milt.

Mr. Wilmot the able and experienced fish culturist of Canada, who has devoted much attention to the breeding of salmon and has made many valuable and instructive experiments, asserts that salmon need not visit the fresh water, but will mature their eggs if they are confined entirely to salt water. This discovery if sustained by fuller investigation, would save expense and facilitate operations, and in order not to do him injustice, we quote his language as used before the meeting of the Fish Cultural Association in 1878, without however, endorsing his views from our own knowledge.

" I should feel inclined to give you some experiments I was engaged in last year with regard to the new mode of retaining fish in salt water. The eggs matured equally well in salt water as in fresh. Of course it is well understood that for many years back, in fact for centuries, naturalists have held that there was a necessity for salmon to go to fresh water to mature their eggs. Last season I was under the impression that the eggs of the salmon would mature if kept in salt water as well as in fresh, and in order to illustrate that, I instructed one of my assistants to retain in the salt-water pond a few parent salmon, while I put the rest in fresh-water ponds ; and he did so, and took the eggs from them at the same time. There was no perceptible difference noticed in the hatching of the eggs from those fish last year. That being sufficient for me to go upon, this season I retained fifty or sixty salmon in the salt-water pond. The eggs matured just as well as those of the fish in the fresh water. They were manipulated, and showed as much vitality and lite as those in the fresh water. They were hatched in fresh water, but the fish were kept in the salt-water cove."