BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 73 



the waters of the East Anglian broads and rivers, as suggested by Mr. 

 Wilmot, the Canadian commissioner to the Fisheries Exhibition at South 

 Kensington, on the occasion of a visit some few weeks ago to the Nor- 

 folk broads. The black bass is a fine sporting fish, and gastronomically 

 to be commended. To these we may add, as suitable to some of our 

 waters, the white-fish {Coregonus alhus) of Canada, which is very pro- 

 lific, and most excellent eating. 



The third point for consideration is — would pisciculture pay? Even 

 if our ordinary fresh- water fish were acceptable to consumers, it is doubt- 

 ful whether the culture of them would commercially be successful. Un- 

 der no circumstances could it be expected that they would be able to 

 compete with salt-water fish in cheapness. The cost of cultivation 

 would, probably, be greater than the advocates of pisciculture antici- 

 pate. Letting the water off ponds in succession, and cropping them 

 with corn or vegetables, as proposed by the late Mr. Frank Buckland, 

 and after the removal of the soil, would involve great labor and expense. 

 Fish are but slowly growing creatures, unless supplied with abundance 

 of food, and this represents a further outlay. During the summer 

 months, Mr. Buckland suggested that putrefying flesh hung over the 

 ponds would supply maggots, and that lob-worms might be gathered 

 in the meadows after dark. But suitable flesh is not always obtaina- 

 able, and for weeks in a drought not a lob- worm will show itself. The 

 latter are often worth from a shilling to half-a-crown a quart for fish, in 

 dry weather, along the Thames side; and are actually imported by 

 thousands from Nottingham, where " vermiculture," or rather worm- 

 gathering, is a recognized industry. The difQculty and expense of 

 feeding the fish in the winter would be still greater. It certainly would 

 not pay to supply them, as Mr. Buckland did his small fry of various 

 kinds at South Kensington, with "chopped beef-steak and biscuits." 

 Whether the quicker growth of foreign fish proposed for naturalization 

 would cover the ex])enses attached to their culture, is a matter on which 

 it is almost impossible to give an opinion. It would be satisfactory to 

 think that careful calculations as to the whole matter would give good 

 grounds for expecting that any system of pisciculture in fresh water 

 would answer the expectations formed of it by its advocates. At all 

 events they will be benefactors who can make two fish to live where 

 only one lived before, and will, by the introduction of new species, de- 

 velop the capacities of our now generally ill-stocked waters. As an 

 encouragement to such, it may be noted that in Germany the scientific 

 culture of carp in ponds is found to be remunerative, as in that country^ 

 and in some other districts on the continent, this fish is still specially 

 popular as an article of food. 



Perhai)S the recent establishment of the National Fish-culture Asso- 

 ciation of Great Britain and Ireland, the honorary secretaries of which 

 are Mr. E. B. Marston and Mr. W. Oldham Chambers, will do much 

 toward the solution of the question. It is certainly one which may 



