From Robert Buist   5 March 1868

Dear Sir,

I duly received your Note of the 28^th. ult^o, and beg to send you by this post copies of my little Pamphlet and articles on the Stormontfield Ponds which I sent to the Field Newspaper, in all of which I think you will find something for your purpose.¹ In the Pamphlet you will find some strange facts regarding the anomalous nature of the Salmon, to which I request your particular attention.—²

The Keeper of our Stormontfield Breeding Ponds³ was in Perth yesterday, and I examined him regarding certain points in your communication. I allowed him to go, in the beginning of January last, to the north of England, to find impregnated ova for a Ship going to New Zealand,⁴ and he has given me certain facts bearing on your enquiries.

1. As to battles of male Salmon: he tells me that in the North Tyne he found about 300 dead males and only one dead female, and of these 300 males he is convinced that the whole had lost their lives by fighting with each other.—⁵ He had the command of the whole of the Duke of Northumberland’s⁶ waters in that river, and the greater part of the fish he took were landed by boat and net, and from that river and the Tweed he had made up all the number of ova that was required to complete the cargo. Of course the milt of one male is sufficient to impregnate the ova of two or three or more females. But you will find some strange facts regarding this in my book.

2. Proportional number of the Sexes. I must here also refer you to my book in which you will find and trace that about the 18^th. month after hatching, the sexes of the fish are clearly discovered.⁷ While in some of the male fish the milt is clearly developed, when they are come to the size of a man’s finger, by shedding the milt over and mixing it with the ova of a grown Salmon of 7 or 8 lbs, it will produce young fish, as we have proved by experiment at our Ponds, where the fish are kept in separate boxes from the produce of entirely full grown fish. This well-ascertained fact shews the wonderful provision of Nature to fecundate eggs in cases where by the feuds of the larger males they might have been passed over. I have asked Mr Brown, the Secretary to our Literary and Antiquarian Society, to give me some Notes of some of his observations, which I will send you when he has leisure to give them.⁸

Our Ova is just about hatching, and if you wish it, I could send you specimens of fish in their earliest stage, and some of them in their second and third year now in the Ponds, both of which of the latter, second and third year, will go off to the sea in the course of next month as smelts,⁹ and some of them will return as grilses weighing from 3 to 7 lbs before the end of August.— I may further mention that while the males 18 months old are sufficient to impregnate full grown ova, the sac of the eggs of female fish of the same hatching can only be discovered as a