hills, exposing a bed of fine gray sand, in which living springs bubble up continually, and fill the excavation with clear cool water.

It is proposed to increase the height of the dam five or six feet, and obtain a pond of three or four acres. Another pond, below the hatchinghouse is also filled with trout. When the full capacity of the works is employed, it is believed that some hundreds of thousands of the beautiful Salmo fentinalis may be sporting together within their waters.

Cold Spring trout works at Charlestown, New Hampshire.-Rev. Livingstone Stone has a nursery of brook trout at Charlestown, near the Connecticut, where he has also been experimenting with salmon. He received a portion of the seventy thousand eggs obtained from the Mirimichi, in New Brunswick, a year ago, the remainder going to the hatching-boxes of J. S. Robinson, of Meredith Village, toward the restocking of the Merrimack River. Mr. Stone has since obtained, after encountering opposition and hinderance from the authorities of New Bruns wiek, two hundred and fifty thousand eggs from forty salmon, half of which were left, by stipulation, to be hatched in their native stream, and half were distributed among the pisciculturists of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, for the stocking of the Connecticut, Merrimack, Salmon Falls, and other rivers of these States. The parent salmon weighed from ten to thirty pounds. The largest number of eggs taken from a single fish was estimated at twenty thousand; the eggs packed in baskets of wet moss, and conveyed one hundred and twenty miles on sleds, three hundred and twenty by rail, and two hundred and eighty by water. At Cold Spring there are about one hundred and fifty thousand trout hatched, (one hundred and sixty thousand eggs,) and an extensive salmon nursery is in full operation.

Long Island trout ponds.-Experimental and initiatory practice in trout-rearing is becoming common upon Long Island. An investment of three hundred thousand dollars, as is reported, has already been made. Returns have of course been light as yet, except in the sale of eggs and young fish.

A few of these improvements may be mentioned. The Sportsman's Club consists of one hundred members; entrance fee, five hundred dollars; yearly dues, twenty dollars. Its property, (at Islip,) sixty to seventy acres, with natural streams, improved by art, exceeds fifty thousand dollars in value, and is yearly increasing in pecuniary and piscatory value. It is at Smithtown, on the north side of the island.

The "Stump Pond," owned by Phillips & Vales, is fished by the "Walton Club." The property covers two hundred acres. Perch and other intruders reduce the value of the property as a trout preserve.

Near this property is one of the best improvements on Long Island; Maitland's Pond, costing thirty thousand dollars, including forty acres of land. A costly lesson in fish-culture was taken by the proprietor, in failing at first to drain off the stream and expel the burrowing pike and eels, which fed to satiety upon the young trout, and to remove the mud and slime of the bottom.

A fine stream, ten miles west of that of the Sportsman's Club, owned by Stillingworth and Johnson, has been improved, and is valued, with two hundred acres of land, at thirty thousand dollars.

At South Oysterbay is a fine trout pond, the property of Timothy Carman, valued at fifteen thousand dollars. The most approved methods of practical pisciculture have been adopted in fitting up a preserve upon the property of August Belmont, as also upon the Phelps property, and a dozen or more other improvements, valued at five to ten thousand dollars each, have been made between Jamaica and Islip,

A very complete establishment is that of Mr. Furman, at Maspeth. The stream, passing through a marshy tract, was small and sluggish, and the experiment of extending it in curves like the letter S through a course of half a mile was deemed a doubtful one; but pure springs came bubbling up from the sand below the excavated earth; the bottom was covered with washed gravel and pebbles, and the sides lined to prevent the washing in of mud. A dam shuts off the surface water, and the improvements of ponds, spawning grounds, and nurseries are very extensive and complete.

Successful experiments in lower latitudes.-The black bass, (Grystes fasciatus,) ranking little below the brook trout as a game fish, and surpassed by few species in quality and flavor, was a few years since unknown in the Potomac, but is now found in moderate abundance in the markets of Washington. Two sportsmen have killed in a few hours of a summer day, a short distance above this city, with the red ibis fly, eighty pounds of this fine fish. It is said that these waters were sup plied with black bass as a result of the introduction of a dozen or more, which had been brought from the West in a locomotive tank, by a Mr. Stabler, and thrown into the Potomac at Cumberland, Maryland. The increase in this river has been rapid, and is indicative of what may be accomplished in stocking eastern rivers with new species of fish, as well as replenishing them with old kinds.

The facility with which the brook trout can be propagated in situa tions having a constant supply of spring water is well illustrated by an experiment made in Pennsylvania, and reported by the editor of the Turf, Field, and Farm, in which twelve hundred trout, weighing onefourth of a pound each, were bred in a large horse trough at a country tavern and fed upon offal from the kitchen and curds from the dairy.

In the States west of the Alleghanies less attention has been given to the subject, the population of that great section not having crowded upon subsistence as yet, and the lakes and rivers not yet giving signs of exhaustion. Here and there a gentleman has a small trout preserve upon his own premises, as a matter of taste and luxury.

A few cases of more extensive effort are reported. A Mr. James Campbell, of Washington County, Indiana, has four trout ponds, in which he has, as is claimed, ten thousand fine speckled trout weighing a pound

each.

OYSTER CULTURE.

The culture of oysters in this country, though mainly confined to their planting and fattening in sheltered beds, somewhat similar to the French claires, or fattening beds, is destined to be greatly extended, especially in the direction of breeding them by artificial aids and appliances. The efforts of ostreoculturists may be stimulated by a view of this branch of French industry, condensed from the London Technologist:

"The very latest novelty in French oyster culture is the introduction by Mlle. Sarah Felix, the sister of the late Madame Rachel, of the Ameri can horse-shoe oyster. This lady is an enthusiastic ostréoculturist, and she has a suite of parks near Havre, which are said to be very profitable. Many of Mlle. Felix's countrymen have of late years taken to oyster farming, and in a short time the foreshores of France will be crowded with oyster-beds, when one of the greatest industries of that country will assuredly be the breeding and fattening of that popular shell-fish. The expense of rearing oysters is so trifling, and the returns so large, that thousands of the seafaring people have gone into the business, and many