ESTTRODUCTIOlSr AND BREEDHSTG OF FISH. 95 



in modern times, but thus far without any important results, 

 economical or physical, though there seems to be good reason to 

 beheve it may be employed with advantage on an extended scale. 

 As in the case of plants, man has sometimes undesignedly intro- 

 duced new species of aquatic animals into countries distant from 

 their birthplace. The accidental escape of Chinese goldfish from 

 ponds where they were bred as a garden ornament, has peopled 

 some European, and, it is said, American streams with this species. 

 Canals of navigation and irrigation interchange the fish of lakes 

 and rivers widely separated by natural barriers, as well as the 

 plants which drop their seeds into the waters. The Erie Canal, 

 as measured by its own channel, has a length of about three hun- 

 dred and sixty miles, and it has ascending and descending locks 

 in both directions. By this route, the fresh-water fish of the 

 Hudson and the Upper Lakes, and some of the indigenous vege- 

 tables of these respective basins, have intermixed, and the fauna 

 and flora of the two regions have now more species common to 

 both than before the canal was opened.* The opening of the 

 Suez Canal will, no doubt, produce very interesting revolutions 

 in the animal and vegetable population of both basins. The 

 Mediterranean, with some local exceptions — such as the bays of 

 Calabria, and the coast of Sicily so picturesquely described by 

 Quatrefagesf — ^is comparatively poor in marine vegetation, and 

 in shell as well as in fin fish. The scarcity of fish in some of its 

 guKs is proverbial, and you may scrutinize long stretches of beach 

 on its northern shores, after every south wind for a whole winter, 

 without finding a dozen shells to reward your search. But no one 

 who has not looked down into tropical or subtropical seas can con- 

 ceive the amazing wealth of the Red Sea in organic life. Its bot- 

 tom is carpeted or paved with marine plants, with zoophytes and 

 with shells, while its waters are teeming with infinitely varied 

 forms of moving Hfe. ^ Most of its vegetables and its animals, no 



and cut off bays of the sea for this purpose. They also naturalized various 

 species of sea-fish in fresh water. 



* The opening or rather the reconstruction of the Claudian emissary by 

 Prince Torlonia, designed to drain the Lake Fucinus, or Celano, has introduced 

 the fish of that lake into the Liri or Garigliano which receives the discharge 

 from the lake. — Dorotea, Sommario storico dell' Alieutica, p. 60. 



f Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste, i., pp. 204 et seq. 



