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A Walk from London to John O'Groat's by Elihu Burritt
page 275 of 313 (87%)
process is as simple as it is successful and valuable. A race or
canal, filled with a clear, mountain stream, and constructed many
years ago to supply motive power to a corn-mill, runs parallel with
the river, at the distance from it of about twenty 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-
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