SALMON FOR NEW ZEALAND.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 245, 23 March 1875, Page 4

SALMON FOR NEW ZEALAND.

Mr Frank Buckland contributes a long account of the operation of collecting salmon eggs for New Zealand to Land, and Water. We extract the following passage:— When we had done fishing we looked anxiously for the fly to take us back to Stirling; the fly did not make its appearance at the time we expected. At Mr Napier’s request I had engaged a photographer to come out and make a picture of the fishing scene. While waiting for the fly and the photographer, 1 sent Mr Edon and all the gillies present to pull moss, as x found we were short of it. They found a quantity under the trees, but it was frozen up, and cut one’s hands in pulling it up. After all I was not obliged to use it, as Mr Kennedy had sent me a supply; but pulling moss had the effect of keeping us warm, and as the evening drew in it became colder than ever. The fly came with the photographer; he set up his apparatus, but as the light was gone he could not take a picture at all, and it then became quite dark, and we somehow or other managed to pack ourselves and tackles into the machine, as they call a fly in Scotland. A* in duty bound I called at the house of Mr G. C. Home Drummond, of Blairdrummond Castle, to thank him for his kindness for allowing us to collect the eggs on his property. The drive by moonlight through the park, which was covered with snow, was very interesting. In due time we arrived in Stirling, and went on immediately to Glasgow. It was absolutely necessary that running water should be found for the eggs that night, so I took them up at once to the icehouse. Arriving there (between ten and eleven at night), everyone was gone except the engine man, who, after a great deal of bother, showed me where I could get running water in which to place the eggs ; the water itself was the purest of the pure, and comes direct from Loch Katrine. In the meantime the carpenter had been getting on famously with the box, on board ship, for the eggs ; this is, in fact, a huge ice house, measuring twelve feet long, by thirteen feet wide, by eight feet high. Mr Kae, the obliging manager of the Patent Ice Company, kindly took superintendence of the ice. By means of the ingenious machinery in his works, be is enabled to freeze up blocks sJin thick, 14ft long, and 3ft deep. The ice-house was thus packed :—First, ice 2ft thick was ranged along the bottom. Then, upon it was carefully deposited a square, consisting of twenty-five salmon eggboxes, each one foot cubic, and four boxes at each corner of the square. Upon these boxes came another stratnm of ice, also 2ft thick ; on this stratum again another twenty-nine egg-boxes. Ice again on the top of these. All around the sides of the ice-house was packed slabs of ice 2ft 6in thick, so that the boxes containing the ova were surrounded on all sides by blocks of ice, the minimum thicknessbeing 2ft. Ice was also packed iu the inter-spaces between each box, precautions being taken that they should not get loose. Nor is this all. All round the big icehouse was built another box, leaving an inter-space of 18in. This space was filled tight with sawdust, in order to keep the temperature as equal as possible, Mr Rae, of the ice manufactory, expresses his belief that the great mass of ice will remain as ice till the ship arrives in New Zealand, where she ought to arrive at earliest about the end of March. There are between thirty and forty tons of ice in the ice house. Captain Rankine, who commands the ship, tells me that the ship may be some three weeks passing through the tropics, and that the temperature would average 86deg., a very great heat for my poor salmon eggs. Both the captain and the mate have, however, kindly promised me, whenever possible, to put a wet sail on the deck, immediately over he ice-box, when the sun is very hot. When the first flooring of ice was quite packed, I went back to the ice-house and brought out the boxes, which had already been packed among blocks of ice iu the ordinary store ice house at the works. These were the eggs collected from the Tay and the Earn at Lord KinnouTs by Mr Edon. We opened several boxes as they were brought out of the store-house, and I was much pleased to find them looking as good and fresh as when first taken. They were most carefully carried down to the ship, put into the ice-house, and buried all in and over with ice that night. The next day was Christmas Day. I found that the good people of Glasgow do not look upon Christmas as we do in the South, but that the labourers, &c, go on working like any other day. I was informed that it was necessary that the ice-house should be closed up on Saturday at the latest, as after that it would interfere with packing the rest of the cargo. It was therefore necessary to pack the eggs I had collected with Mr Napier on the Teith, on Christmas Day. So Mr Edon, myself, and Mr Napier—who had luckily come over—set to work about 2 p.m,, and we worked away, packing the eggs, till the evening was pretty far advanced. The cold in the ice-house was, I think, much more cutting and intense that it was on the river’s bank when we collected the eggs. This was natural, as the ice-making machine, freezing up an immense quantity of water into ice, kept on “ Click, click, click” within a few inches of us while we were at work, and as we packed each box one or other of us had to carry it to the ice-house close by, where a man covered it over with blocks. The water was, of course, very cold to the hands, but I soon found out that a gingerbeer bottle, filled with hot water, which the engineman gave me, was a capital thing to keep one’s fingers elastic. We also took turns at catching the eggs out of the water, sifting the moss under water, packing the boxes, &c.; so altogether we four, Mr Ray, the engineman, the icepacker, and the lad who helped me, spent a very jolly Christmas Day in the ice-house. I do not recollect ever before having spent a more pleasant Christmas Day, and when I see the well-known advertisement, “Where to spend a happy day ?” I answer, “ Christmas Day. In the ice-house at Glasgow, packing salmon eggs for New Zealand.” On Saturday morning early the spring cart took down these, the last lot of twentynine boxes of eggs. Ice was immediately put upon them, and the box filled up. I was very glad Mr Napier was present to see the Teith eggs packed, for he was perfectly satisfied that when put in the boxes they were in first-class condition in every way. Among the boxes of salmon eggs is packed a box of a different shape containing one thousand common trout eggs and one thousand char eggs. These were presented to the New Zealand authorities by Mr Parnaby, of Troutdale Fishery, Keswick. Mr Parnaby very kindly brought these eggs himself up to Glasgow, just in time for them to be yagfced, aad I was pleased to find that this

experienced fish culturist quite approved of all the arrangements we had made. There are several lakes iu New Zealand, and if char are established there from the ova sent by Mr Farnaby, it will indeed be a matter of congratulation. During nearly the whole of the days we were engaged in the ice-house and in the ship, a dense fog, especially on Christmas Day, prevailed. This impeded us considerably in going to and from the ship, ice-house, Mr Galbraith’s office, &c. On one occasion the fog was so thick that the cabman would not take us on ; another cabman took us a little way from the docks, and then refused to go any further ; so we had to turn out, and find our way as well as we could. If we can imagine the bottom of Lord Nelson’s Column to be pointed like a hedgestake, and then having taken off the Admiral from the top, we were to drive the column, by means of a series of iron rods, one over the other, right bang into the earth, and if we were to keep on driving the column in long enough, in course of time the column wou'd come out (lower end first, of course) iu New Zealand, which is as near as possible at the antipodes of Great Britain. This, therefore, will let the reader know that it is a very long way round the side of the world for my poor salmon eggs to travel. They have, in fact, to go half way round the world.

I understand that the ship Timaru, which is bound for Port Chalmers, will call at a place called the Bluff, and that she will then be towed up by steamer to Bluff Jetty, where the eggs will be landed. They will then not have far to be carried by water to the hatching house. She finally left Scotland on January 7th, Having finished all my work at Glasgow, I determined to get back to London by the Limited Mail, though my kind friend Mr Galbraith tried to persuade me not to risk it. It was indeed a risk, for at Glasgow the fog was so great that we could hardly see a yard before us, and this fog lasted all the way to Carlisle, the engine screaming like a hysterical woman all the time, and every now and then she pulled up altogether and shrieked aloud. The frost also was intense. My thermometer lay out as we were going along by Tebay station marked 20 degrees, or 12 below freezing point. Mr Eldon and myself, however, arrived quite safe at Euston about eight o’clock on Sunday morning, after fourteen hours of the most bitter cold I ever experienced in a railway carriage. I sympathise rather with my salmon eggs in the ice on board ship. I calculate that if I and the eggs had gone on direct to New Zealand by the Limited Mail we should have had to go ahead unceasingly in the fastest train in the world for nineteen days. Of course lam continually thinking most anxiously about these eggs. That they were alive and well when packed in the boxes, that every possible care was taken in packing the ice by Mr Rae, I am positive and certain; still something may happen to them when they are far away out in solitary mid-ocean, the good Timaru being subject to tempests, storms, and all the perils of the mighty deep. However, I have done my best. Let us ask a s good fortune for the attempt to transfer to friends of the Antipodes one of the greatest blessings God has given us in this favored country—Salmon.