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II.— THE COMMUNAL FISH-FARMS OF 



COMACCHIO. 



Comacchio as the seat of the most extensive and most 

 highly organized system of marine fish-farming in exist- 

 ence was brought prominently to the world's notice for 

 the first time by the epoch-making account of a journey 

 made by Coste, the father of French aquiculture, during 

 the years 1853 and 1854 by instruction of Napoleon III. 

 It is interesting to read in the official directions issued 

 to Coste in 1852 that he was desired to explore the 

 coast of France and of the Italian Adriatic with "a 

 " view to determine under what conditions extensive 

 "experiment in the propagation and acclimatization of 

 " marine animals should be organized " ; at the period 

 in question the potentialities of the artificial cultiva- 

 tion of oysters and fish were occupying wide-spread 

 attention in France and the national optimism already 

 saw in imagination the numerous salt marshes and land- 

 locked bays along their coasts converted into fish-ponds 

 and oyster parks. 



The results of Coste's investigations were published 

 by the French Government in 1B55 and in prefacing the 

 dry details of the present day condition and organization 

 of the Comacchio fish-rearing establishment, I cannot do 

 better than translate the picturesque and graphic descrip- 

 tion furnished by Coste who thus introduced the same 

 subject : — 



" At the time when barbarians were driving the civilised peoples 

 (of the Roman Empire) before them the population of Comacchio, 

 like the founders of Venice, sought refuge in the bosom of an immense 

 marsh, which, since the time when it was thus occupied, has been 

 gradually transformed into a great establishment for the exploitation 

 of the sea, where its methods attract fry hatched in the Adriatic 

 and gather in a harvest of fish when these become adult, by processes 

 as well conceived as those pursued by agriculturists in the sowing 

 of their fields and the reaping of their crops." 



" Less favoured than its neighbour Venice, and unable because of 

 the inferiority of its position to aspire either to commercial sovereignty 

 or to the rewards of conquest, Comacchio applied its genius to per- 

 fect an admirable system- of dykes built with the mud of its lakes, made 

 firm with fragments of the shells living in its waters, and intersected 

 by numerous sluices opening into well-arranged canals which while 



