652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



It is believed that tlie larger apparatus could be constructed now 

 for from £150 to £175, and the smaller for £50. 



The cost of charcoal for the stoves with the addition of ansesthetic 

 fluid is, in the large chamber, a little over one halfpenny per animal 

 when eighty to a hundred are killed at one time. When fewer are 

 killed the expense is a little increased ; the trouble and substance re- 

 quired being as little for a hundred as for a less part of that number. 



^»» 



FISH AND FISHmG m CHINESE WATEKS. 



Br M. MAUEICE JAMETEL. 



rpHE Yellow Sea is distinguished above all other things by the 

 -L abundance of the life it sustains, both on its surface and in its 

 depths. Everywhere that there is enough water to carry them, in the 

 numerous rivers and canals, and on the coast-waters of China, there 

 are coming and going constantly boats of every shape and size, in 

 fleets. The activity of this marine life is owing not more to the com- 

 fort with which the abundance of water-surface and the frequency of 

 harbors allow it to be kept up than to the intense vitality and fruit- 

 fulness of the denizens of the water itself. Wherever there is a little 

 water, organized beings increase and multiply so rapidly that the most 

 industrious labors of the fishermen impose no check upon them, and 

 measures to protect them would be superfluous. 



Once, as I was crossing the marshes between Tientsin and Peking, 

 I noticed here and there little ponds of water that had been left by the 

 melting of the ice in the spring. I should have given them no atten- 

 tion if I had not observed some peasants wading through them, as if 

 they took pleasure in the occupation. I asked my driver what they 

 were doing, and he said they were catching fish. Hardly believino- 

 him, I went up to one of the ponds, and found two men engaged there, 

 one scooping up little fish with a hand-net, and filling a basket with 

 them, and the other catching with his hands frogs to keep company 

 with the fishes ; and this in a puddle which a European tadpole would 

 have hardly deigned to live in. 



The great abundance of ichthyic life in the Chinese waters is fre- 

 quently ascribed to the high development which pisciculture has at- 

 tained in the Celestial Empire. I should say, from what I have 

 observed, that it is due to the wise pisciculture of the past, under 

 which a reserve of aquatic life has been accumulated, so abundant 

 that years of improvidence and waste have not been suflScient per- 

 ceptibly to reduce it ; for the art of pisciculture, like some other arts 

 which once flourished in China, and are now in decay, has of late 

 years fallen into comparative disuse. 



