Natural History. 235 



very top, their numerous water-plants, and their almost amphibious 

 habits as to their domiciles, are still further proofs that the country 

 was, once, more of an aquaium than it now is. Hence the facility 

 of making canals, which are their high-roads (as wheel-carriaged, j 

 and beasts of draught, are too expensive appendages, for the sys-. f 

 tematic economy of the celestial empire !) and hence the eaSe with 

 which a pond may be made in any otherwise useless corner. Such 

 tanks, or ponds, are generally met with in market-garden grounds, 

 where they serve the double purpose of a reservoir, and a stew for 

 rearing and fattening fish. 



When a pond is made for this purpose, and filled with water, the 

 owner goes to market, and buys as many young store-fish as his 

 pond can conveniently hold ; this he can easily do, as almost all '•<. 

 their fish are brought to market alive. Placed in the stew, they \ 

 are regularly fed morning and evening, or as often as the feeder 

 finds it necessary; their food is chiefly boiled rice, to which is 

 added, the blood of any animals they may kill, wash from their 

 stewing-pots and dishes, &c., indeed any animal offal or vegetable 

 matter which the fish will eat. It is said, they also use some olea« i 

 ceous medicament in the food, to make the fish more voracious, in j 

 order to accelerate their fattening ; but of this the writer could' | 

 obtain no authentic account. 



Fish so fed and treated, advance in size rapidly, though not to 

 any great weight; as the kind (a species of perch) which came 

 under observation, never arrive at much more than a pound avoir-/ i 

 dupois ; but from the length of three or four inches, when first ^ 

 put in, they grow to eight or nine in a few months, and are then 

 marketable. Drafts from the pond are then occasionally made; r 

 the largest are first taken off, and conveyed in large shallow tub*' j 

 of water to market : if sold, well ; if not, they are brought back and. j 

 replaced in the stew, until they can be disposed of. * { 



This business of fish-feeding is so managed that the stock ar^* \ 

 all fattened off about the time the water is most wanted for the' * 

 garden-crops. The pond is then cleaned out, the mud carefully 

 saved, or spread as manure, — again filled with water, stocked with 

 young fry, and fed as before. . ' ; 



An intelligent Chinaman, from whom the writer had the aboviT ^ 

 detail, and who showed him as much of the process as could be 

 seen during a residence of three months, declared as his beUef, that 

 a spot of ground, containing from twenty to thirty square yards^- \ 

 would yield a greater annual profit as a stew, than it would in any ' 

 other way to which it could possibly be applied* 



That l^sh may be tamed, suffer themselves to be caressed, and 

 even raised out of their natural element by the hand, has been long 

 known to naturalists ; witness the famous old carp formerly in the 

 pond of some religious house at Chantilly, in France, with many 

 other instances on record. But it is probable no people has carried : 

 the art of stew-feeding fish, and practising it as a profitable concern,' j 

 to such lengths, as is done by the Chinese at this day. I. M. • 



