CORRESPONDEN CE.
A SURREY FISH-FARM.
A VERY curious and interesting sight may be seen by any one who will travel by the South-Western Railway to Hazle- mere, and turning westward through the picturesque village of Shottermill—all the villages in this exquisite country are picturesque—follow for a short distance the road to Hind- head. About a furlong from the sign-post, a turning on the left hand will take the traveller to the fish-farm, most successfully conducted by Mr. Andrews, of Guildford. Any visitor who has the look of an honest man—for the place is not without its temptations—will be welcome ; though, to be on the safe side, he may provide himself with a letter from Mr. Andrews, or with an introduction from one of the residents in the neighbourhood.
The fish-farm consists of eighteen ponds, of varying sizes, all of which are fed with a perpetual supply of water from one of the springs of the Wey ; the crops grown, so to speak, are trout and grayling. The actual development of the ova into fish is carried on at Mr. Andrews's establishment at Guildford; but the fish are reared in these ponds, and may be seen in all stages of growth, from fry of a couple of inches long to magnificent creatures which must weigh not less than five or six pounds. For obvious reasons, fish of different sizes have different abodes. The trout is not, indeed, as voracious as the pike, who will attack one of his own species that is but a shade smaller than himself, but he is not above swallowing a young relative when occasion offers. " There should be a thousand fish in that pond," said my guide to me, "if that big fellow there has not taken some of them," and he pointed to a dimly seen shape under the opposite bank,—a fish, it might be guessed, of about four pounds. The ordinary inhabitants varied in weight from a pound to three-quarters, and more than one could lie seen sailing about with a white scar on the shoulders, telling of a narrow escape from the jaws of their over- grown neighbour. One pond is set apart for the large female trout, and there are separate abodes for separate varieties. In one may be seen the silvery trout of Loch Leven ; in another, distinguished by an abundance of small crimson spots, trout from the Test ; in a third an American variety, gorgeous with deep orange patches on the belly; a fourth contains the more soberly-coloured English species.
Though the visitor may always see something to repay him,
he should time his arrival for the feeding hour, which is 11 a.m. The fish are fed on horse-flesh made into something like a mince, and use-up an animal, which costs, I heard, a pound on an average, in not many days. It is one of the prettiest sights I have ever witnessed to see these brilliant creatures swooping through the clear water at the morsels as
they slowly sank. Sometimes an unusually large piece would be left untouched for a few moments till some trout bolder than his fellows would rash at it and divide it. The fragments then disappeared almost instantaneously. For an old angler the sight was almost too much. But what am I to say of my feelings when my obliging guide put a large hand-net into the water, and scooped out some ten or twelve fish, magnifi- cent creatures, that would have made one almost deliriously happy if they had been fairly caught by rod and line. They were curiously tame, and, if one might judge from the leisurely way in which they sailed off when restored to the water, were not in the least alarmed by being taken oat. It might be observed, however, that the very largest trout were somewhat more shy than the others, and did not feed as readily.
My guide told me that he and his fellows have very little trouble in watching their master's property, which is certainly safer in its vicinity to a quiet Surrey village than it would be on the outskirts, say, of Sheffield or Bradford. The chief enemies from whom the fish have to be defended are birds,—kingfishers and herons. A kingfisher had been caught on the day before my visit, in a trap, which I saw, and that very morning my guide had found a trout of a pound weight lying dead on the bank. A heron had seized it, and being disturbed at the moment, had left it. That heron has probably paid before now the penalty of his misdeeds. What may be called a scare-crow, the life-size figure of a man, had been placed on a bench near the central pond, but the birds had apparently found out that he was but a King Log. My guide was confident that the heron's legs emit, as he stands in the water, an odour which attracts the fish. The ponds, indeed, are so deep at the edge that the heron cannot really stand in the water, and must haie some way of getting the fish to approach him. The trout reared in the fish-farms are, I believe, chiefly used for re-stocking Scotch rivers and lochs. C.
Previous page
