OYSTER-INDUSTRIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 279 



Many similar experiments are in course of trial with every probability 

 of success. 



How happens it that, among all these efforts, so few have had for their 

 objects the fish, the crustaceans and the mollusks ? With the exception 

 of the carp and the gold-fish from China, which may be considered 

 merely objects of luxury, and of no great utility, there have been very 

 few cases of acclimation, since the introduction of living fish into our 

 water-courses from localities at no great distance cannot be properly 

 considered such.* The attempt with the gourami of China, the most 

 delicious of fresh-water fish, has hitherto been without result, but it is 

 gratifying to record that it has become an article of commerce with 

 Europe, and that a great many specimens are now found in the island of 

 Mauritius. As to the edible mollusks, the very first effort at acclimation 

 is probably that now undertaken with the oysters of Virginia and the 

 Venus mercenaria. 



Before the use of steamboats and railroads, those two great levers 

 of modern activity, the transportation of foreign marine or fresh-water 

 productions was attended with great difficulties. The slow progress of 

 navigation by sail constituted a very unfavorable condition, to which 

 should be added a want of knowledge of the proper management of the 

 animals. With perseverance, however, such transportation was not im- 

 possible, as is proved by the importation of the gourami into the Island 

 of Mauritius, and by similar instances recorded in history .t 



M. Milbert, a traveler employed by the Museum of Natural History, 

 succeeded, in 1824, in bringing to Havre some fish from the United 

 States. Unfortunately they all perished on their arrival, through the 

 carelessness of the captain of the vessel, who left them upon the deck 

 during a heavy winter frost. Milbert was inconsolable in consequence 

 of the failure. We have another instance, in the case of an American 

 merchant, who, about twenty-five years ago, emptied into the roadstead of 

 Boston a cargo of sea-bass, taken in the bay of New York, and con- 

 veyed to their destination in a boat- well; from that time these fish, be- 

 fore unknown in the latitude of Boston, have multiplied to such an 

 extent that the fishermen capture them daily. If, at the time when sail- 

 ing-vessels were the only means of transportation, there were very few 



* The carp was introduced in England in 1514, by Marshall ; and into Denmark in 

 1550, by Pierre Oxe. In our time, M. Coste has naturalized the grayling in our 

 waters. At the commencement of the century, Peron and Lesueur attempted in vain 

 to import the gourami into France, and a few years later Captain Philbert followed 

 their example with no better success. He, however, kept one fish alive until within 

 sight of the shores of France. 



t In ancient times, the Romans, not content with having naturalized, in several of 

 the lakes of Italy, different kinds offish, such as the vulsinum and the ciminus ordinarily 

 found at the mouths of rivers, introduced into the Tuscan Sea the Scams onias of the 

 seas of Syria. This remarkable undertaking was accomplished under the reign of 

 Claudius, by one of his freedmen, Elipertius Optatus, who commanded the Roman 

 fleet. The scaria were imported in boat-wells, and for several years were carefully 

 thrown back into the sea when caught in the nets of the fishermen. 



