3-008-489 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Pisciculture - ponds at home and abroad: salmon-stairs, 1862. Messrs. Ashworth '...are introducing salmon into [Irish] rivers where it has been hitherto impossible for them to exist in consequence of their not having communication with the sea..."during the summer, when fish require to move to and from the sea, [the] canal is dry, so that the fish in Mask cannot get down, and the fish in the Corrib cannot get up. There is a continuous flow of water from the upper to the lower lake, the water having worked a passage through caverns for itself underneath the ground, through the rocks: any surplus supply flows through these intricate channels, through which the fish have never been known to pass. In order, therefore, to assist the salmon in their annual migration to the sea, and to perfect the work begun by the Messrs. Ashworth, it will be absolutely necessary for the Board of Works to close up these caverns in the lake in order to divert the waters thus running waste into the canal, and to improve the passage by erecting stairs to afford the salmon an uninterrupted passage between the two lakes." A stair of the kind proposed, of which we subjoin a rough plan, can be easily constructed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.