FISH AND FISHING IN CHINESE WATERS. 653 



With oysters the case is different, and the Chinese are still obliged 

 to keep up a systematic cultivation. At Ta-kao, in Formosa, two 

 methods of propagation are employed. The first consists in casting 

 here and there on the mud-banks, stones, which are to be taken up 

 again five or six months afterward, when they will be found to be 

 covered with oysters. The other method, called by the natives bam- 

 boo-culture, is more complicated, but also more productive. In Au- 

 gust or September the oystermen prepare a number of bamboo sticks, 

 of about the size of a walking-cane, by pointing one end and splitting 

 the other end to about half-way down. They wedge a flat oyster-shell 

 into the cleft, and, bringing the splits together at the top, insert them 

 to be held into a hole they have bored in another oyster-shell. They 

 then plant the stakes, in close rows, where they will be covered at high- 

 tide, so that the fry can attach themselves to them. As soon as the 

 little oysters have formed on the sticks, the latter are transplanted to 

 the mud-bank, whence they are pulled out, in time, covered with 

 oysters large enough to eat. The Chinese pretend that the fry forms 

 on the oyster-shell, and can be preserved there indefinitely. All the 

 pains we have described are taken to promote the hatching of the eggs 

 with which the old shells are supposed to be already covered. 



The Chinese aquatic fauna is exceedingly varied, and contains rep- 

 resentatives of nearly all the kinds that are found in the waters of 

 Western Europe. The fishermen have given to each species a particu- 

 lar name, which is generally suggested by its form, or by some other 

 distinctive characteristic. Thus, they have the war-god crab, so called 

 because its head looks like the head of that divinity ; the little bonze 

 crab ; and the all-sour crab, so named from its bad taste. The scien- 

 tific disciples of Confucius have adopted these names in their more or 

 less fantastic works on the natural history of the Middle Kingdom, 

 and the painters have enriched these works with illustrations intended 

 to facilitate the understanding of the text. Frequently the pictures, 

 notwithstanding their imperfections, give a more exact idea of their 

 subjects than the pretended descriptions by which they are accompa- 

 nied. The last are, in fact, so fanciful that it is impossible to form a 

 conception of the creatures to which they are supposed to relate. Thus, 

 we may learn from them that frogs have only three feet, while lobsters 

 are provided " with so great a number that the most patient man can 

 not count them." The accounts of the habits of the creatures are even 

 more fabulous than those concerning their structure. Some are said 

 to live without eating ; some to increase by breaking into pieces ; and 

 others to be able to live as well on the land as in the water. 



Authenticated by the signatures of the disciples of Confucius, and 

 by appearing in print, these fables are believed by the people more 

 readily than even the observations they may make on the animals 

 themselves The fanciful descriptions of three-legged frogs, made by 

 a literatus who lived three hundred years ago, is to-day accepted by 



