OF ALL COUNTRIES. 6i 



allude almost as familiarly to the fish ponds of the great as 

 to the farms of the humbler class of citizen. Attention too 

 was paid to the diet of the denizens of these ponds, but 

 rather with a view to heightening the flavour to please the 

 palate of the rich than to increasing the stock in order that 

 the poor might have a more abundant and cheaper supply. 

 Civil wars, however, jointly with foreign invasion, destroyed 

 all traces of this art in classic lands, so that centuries 

 elapsed during which little is heard of pisciculture in the 

 western world. Its revival is due, according to the Baron 

 de Montgaudry, to Dom Pinchon, a monk of the Abbey of 

 Reome, in the C6te d'Or, during the fifteenth century. A 

 very simple apparatus was all that the good father used — 

 long boxes, wooden at top and bottom, and latticed at the 

 extremities with osiers, were filled with fine sand as a lining, 

 and covered at top and bottom with latticework. After 

 the lapse of nearly three centuries, a second step was taken 

 by a fisherman of Lippe in the direction of discovering the 

 artificial propagation of trout, and a series of experiments 

 was carried on for sixteen yearsby Jacobi, of Hohenhausen, 

 the results of which were communicated some time after- 

 wards by Sir Humphry Davy to our own countrymen. 

 About 1824 Professors Agassiz and Voght had occasion 

 to make experiments on a class of the salmonidae in 

 Neufchatel, and employed artificial fecundation for obtain- 

 ing the eggs required. Next came Shaw's experiments at 

 Edinburgh ; and the evidence given at Stormontfield irre- 

 fragably established the various stages of parr, smoult, 

 grilse, and salmon. To another fisherman of Bresse, a 

 village in the Vosges, is due the observation of the causes 

 leading chiefly to the destruction of the fry to be found in 

 the consumption of the eggs by other fish, the floods, the 

 droughts, and the attacks of insects. And from him too 



