EARLY SALMON CULTURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21521, 19 June 1933, Page 11

EARLY SALMON CULTURE

OVA FOR NEW ZEALAND

SEQUEL TO 1878 CONSIGNMENT

[FROM OUR OW>- CORRRSrONDENXI

LOXDOX, May 12

Professor Garstang, of Leeds University, has delivered a series of lectures under the Frank Buckland Foundation on economic fish culture and these have now been published in pamphlet form. In one of the addresses he refers to Mr. Buckland, who died in 1880, leaving the nation liis museum of fish culture, now at South Kensington, and a reversionary sum of £SOOO with which to endow a professorship of fish culture.

Mr. Buckland was a naturalist from boyhood, and relinquished his appointment as army surgeon to follow his real bent, starting the journal Land and ater and eventually,®* becoming an inspector of fisheries. From 18(37 the date of the latter appointment—down to his death in 1880 all his time and energy were practically devoted to' fishery duties and problems. The boy who, at Winchester, was noted for his skill in wiring trout, and later in hatching salmon, and perch ova, became famous as a "water farmer," whose great object Avas to increase and render more available the harvest of the sea and rivers.

The death of Mr. Buckland at the early age of 54, Professor Garstang says, was entirely due to the recklessness of his devotion to the causo he had at heart. In 1878 came a telegraphic request from the New Zealand Government for an additional consignment of salmon ova. Ho knew tlio request was desperately late, but at once raced north to Newcastle only to find the fish spent in the Tyne; theneo to Carlisle to find the same state of things in the Caldew. Any ordinary man would have given it; up, but he doubled back to Devonshire, and got what he wanted just in time to catch the steamer for New Zealand. But he undermined a, vigorous constitution, and never recovered from the effects of the prolonged exposure to icy water and driving snowstorms which lie endured on this occasion.