In Ireland, Mr. Thomas Ashworth, of the Galway fisheries, finds it as profitable and as easy to breed salmon as it is to rear sheep. His fisheries are a decided success; and, if we except the cost of some extensive engineering operations in forming fish-passes to admit of a communication with the sea, the cost of his experiments has been trifling and the returns exceptionally large. Mr. Ashworth put into his fisheries no less than a million and a half of salmon eggs in the course of two seasons—viz., 659,000 eggs in 1861, and 770,000 in 1862.[3] I am anxious to obtain a consecutive and detailed account of the operations carried out by the Messrs. Ashworth, but have not been able to get correct particulars. Mr. Ashworth has lately visited the oyster-farms of the Isle of Re, and has a high opinion of the efforts made for the multiplication of that favourite mollusc. He has very obligingly communicated to me a number of interesting statistics as to French oyster-culture, which I have incorporated into my account of the shell-fish fisheries. Two recent achievements in the art of fish-culture, or at any rate in the art of acclimatisation, deserve to be chronicled in this division of the “Harvest of the Sea.” I allude to the successful introduction into Australia of the British salmon, and the equally successful bringing to this country of a foreign fish—the _Silurus glanis_. Grave doubts at one time prevailed among persons interested in acclimatisation and pisciculture as to whether or not it were possible to introduce the British salmon into the waters of Australia; and an interesting controversy was about three years ago carried on in various journals as to the best way of taking out the fish to that country. Those very wise people who never do anything, but are largely endowed with the gift of prophecy, at once proclaimed that it could not be done; that it was impossible to take the salmon out to Australia, etc. etc. But happily for the cause of progress in natural science, and the success of this particular experiment, there were men who had resolved to carry it out and who would not be put down. Mr. Francis Francis, Mr. Frank Buckland, and Mr. J. A. Youl, took a leading part in the achievement; but before they fell upon their successful plan of taking out the ova in ice, hot discussions had ensued as to how the salmon could be introduced into the rivers of the Australian Continent. Many plans were suggested: some for carrying out the young fish in tanks, and others for taking out the fructified ova, so that the process of hatching might be carried on during the voyage. One ingenious person promulgated a plan of taking the parr in a fresh-water tank a month or two before it changed into a smolt, saying that after the change it would be easy to keep the smolts supplied with _fresh_ salt water direct from the sea as the ship proceeded on her voyage.