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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



agus. They do not require the arteries to 

 be cut, for the nature of those vessels was 

 not known when the rules were made, but 

 the arteries and the important nerves around 

 their sheath are cut in practice, and the ani- 

 mal speedily faints into insensibility, and 

 dies of haemorrhage. The important points 

 of the code arc, that the steps in slaughter 

 shall be continuous, because any interrup- 

 tion, however minute, in the process, is like- 

 ly to prolong the sufferings of the animal 

 and make it unfit for food ; that the cut 

 shall be made by a to-and-f ro stroke, with- 

 out any pressure beyond what is required to 

 carry the knife down to the necessary depth ; 

 that the incision in the skin shall accurately 

 coincide in length with the deeper portion, 

 so as to leave no " tail " to the wound ; that 

 the wound shall not be made so high as to 

 risk contact of the knife with the bony 

 structures above the cartilaginous rings of 

 the trachea, for this would be likely to cause 

 preventable suffering to the animal, and com- 

 pel the rejection of its flesh as food ; and 

 that no tissue should be torn or jagged. The 

 candidate for a license to slaughter has to 

 go through a long course of preparation, 

 of which a kind of rough anatomy forms a 

 part, and afterward to prove his compe- 

 tency to the satisfaction of the appointed 

 authorities. The heart is also carefully ex- 

 amined, to ascertain whether it is fit for 

 food. The rules on this subject, although 

 made before anything was accurately known 

 of pathology, contribute, as a Avhole, to the 

 selection of that which is good and to the 

 rejection of that which is bad. The use 

 of the blood is forbidden, and it is in 

 the blood that science to-day tells us the 

 germs and the matters that are detrimental 

 are most likely to be found and to be most 

 active. The lung is the organ most dili- 

 gently searched and severely tested ; and it 

 is the lung which is most liable to disease, 

 and in which, when disease is present, it is 

 most obvious. Fewer directions are given 

 concerning search for morbid conditions in 

 the other organs, "for, as it was known 

 that animals were but rarely perfectly 

 sound in their entire system, a more rigid 

 search would have been nearly tantamount 

 to depriving the people altogether of animal 

 food. But, although a search for other 

 diseased organs is not enjoined, any morbid 



condition observed by the practiced eye of 

 the slaughterer insures the rejection of the 

 animal as food." 



The Origin and Progress of Piscicult- 

 nre. M. Ph. Gauckler, in a recent work 

 on fresh-water fishes, has reviewed the his- 

 tory of pisciculture from the earliest times 

 to the present. In modern times, Dom 

 Pinchon, a monk of the Abbey of Reome, 

 in the fourteenth century, hatched fish in 

 boxes through which a current of water 

 w^as kept slowly flowing. The Chinese 

 practice of placing limbs of trees or herbs 

 in the spawning-places to collect the eggs 

 has been in vogue from time immemo- 

 rial in Europe, chiefly in the ponds of Bo- 

 hemia. A Swedish magistrate named Lund, 

 of Linkoping, adopted it successfully in 

 1761, after having casually remarked that 

 eggs which clung to juniper-branches did 

 better than those which fell to the ground. 

 In 1834 Mauro Rusconi, an Italian, success- 

 fully propagated the tench, the bleak, and 

 the perch, in the lake of Como ; and MM. 

 Acrassiz and Vogt beccan at about the same 

 time their embi'yological experiments on the 

 Sahnonidce, with the view of multiplying 

 one of the species in the lake of Neufchatel. 

 Mr. John Shaw, of Drumlanrig, adopted ar- 

 tificial culture to increase the product of 

 the salmon-fisheries of the river Nith, in 

 Scotland. His example was followed by 

 Lord Gray, on the Tay, in 1838, and by 

 others in 1841. Joseph Remy, of La Bresse, 

 in the Vosges, made his first experiments 

 in artificial reproduction, having, by his 

 own investigations, discovered a process of 

 which Jacobi had given an account, but 

 which had not attained publicity eighty 

 years before. M. Coste, of the College of 

 France, perceived the importance of this 

 discovery and adopted it in 1850, while he 

 secured a suitable reward to Remy. The 

 attention of several persons in France was 

 directed to pisciculture by the enthusias- 

 tic publications of M. Coste, and the experi- 

 ments of M. de Quatrefages and other mem- 

 bers of the Society of Acclimation. They 

 were encouraged by the gratuitous distribu- 

 tion of eggs and fry, which were liberally 

 furnished to French and foreign customers 

 from the establishment of Huningue. Dur- 

 ing the later vears of the French adminis- 



