1896.] Fish Culture. 39 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, February 14, 1896. 



Sir James Crichton-Browne, M.D. LL.D. F.R.S. Treasurer and 

 Vice-President, in the Chair. 



J. J. Armistead, Esq. Member of the Eoyal Commission on 

 Tweed and Solway Fisheries. 



Fish Culture. 



I NEED hardly for a moment dwell upon the importance of the subject 

 upon which I am about to address you this evening. Fish culture 

 has made very rapid strides during the last few years, and its progress 

 and success have given those who are engaged in it opportunities of 

 becomiug much more intimately acquainted with some of its advan- 

 tages, and also with the proper use of the great motive power which 

 has been placed in the hands of man by an all-wise Creator. 



Although a knowledge of fish culture seems to have been lost for 

 a long period, yet there is every evidence that it was well known to 

 the ancients. The Chinese at the present day are well acquainted 

 with fish culture, and have been so from time immemorial. They 

 have curious methods of placing bundles of sticks and mats in the 

 rivers, on which the fish deposit their ova, which afterwards become 

 a marketable commodity. There is no doubt whatever that fish 

 culture was well known to the ancient Greeks, and Eomaus also, but, 

 as their knowledge has not been handed down to the present time, it 

 might as well, so far as we are concerned, have never existed. It is 

 said of LucuUus, that at Tusculum he caused canals to be dug between 

 his fish ponds and the sea, so that when the fish came up from the sea 

 to deposit their eggs in the fresh water, he was enabled to intercept 

 them by placing gratings in these canals, and while their posterity 

 were growing the fish themselves furnished the market. That fish 

 were held in high esteem in the olden time is very evident. They 

 were patronised by the Csesars. Augustus had a fish engraved on 

 his signet ring, and they appeared upon coins not only during his 

 time but long afterwards, and the coins of Greece were similarly 

 embellished. Towns, islands, ships and taverns were named after 

 them, and from the same source ancient literature is said to have 

 derived some of its prettiest similes, myths and fables. They were 

 also sacrificed to the various deities. But, notwithstanding this, the 

 ancients seem to have set far greater store upon fish as articles of 

 food in most cases, than as objects of worship. " We remember the 

 fish which we did eat in Egypt," was the cry of the Israelites after 



