328 On tJio Naturalization of Fish . 



stocked in this manner, and managed, as any other portion of 

 the farm : since it is even destroyed, or suffered to become dry 

 occasionally, and again renewed in the wet season, by the means 

 of purchased spawn, or stock; just as a sheep farmer buys 

 lambs to stock his mountains. If England is too wi^e to learn 

 of Rome or China, or of France and Germany, or even of the 

 experiments on which I have dwelt so much and so often, it 

 must be a pleasing reflection that it is already so amply informed 

 as to have passed the bounds of all possible improvement and 

 all possible wishes. But that I may terminate this particular 

 suggestion, 1 will only further point out, that lobsters, and the 

 crab tribe generally, might very easily be transported in this 

 manner, and that, in them, it is easily known when the ovum 

 has been impregnated, by means of a black spot with which it 

 is then marked. 



If I ought to apologize already for the length of this com- 

 munication, I shall conclude it by sayins;, that whatever may 

 be judged of the general philosophy of this subject, there is 

 not and never has been any thing to prevent the cultivation of 

 fish, in ponds of salt-water at least, or the preservation of them 

 in any water in which they will live for a sufficient length of 

 time, so as to render that a depot for the purposes of a fish 

 store, calculated for the steady supply of a market, in the 

 manner which I formerly described and proposed. If, after so 

 many years as this proposal has been made, London has not 

 seen either the facility, or the utility, it will discover them at 

 some future day ; just as it discovered, ten years after there 

 had been twenty-six steam-boats on the Clyde, that a steam- 

 boat might possibly be of use on the Thames; just as it op- 

 posed gas-lights, and just as it has adopted gas-lights. 



