478 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



operated in 1841 upon the water-courses belonging- to Mr. Drumnioud, 

 near Uxbridge, tlien upon the estate of the Duke of Devonshire at Chats- 

 worth, upon that of Mr. Gurnie at Oarsalton, and that of Mr. Hibberts 

 at Chalfort. Mr. Boccius must have raised already about two millions 

 of little trout. 



The discovery of Jacobi had passed successfully, as we have seen, the 

 trial and application in England as in Germany. Up to 1848, neverthe- 

 less, France had remained very much behind in experiments of this sort. 

 Although she, perhaps more than any other country, had need of effectual 

 means for remedying the impoverishment of the waters, the French 

 economists had given scarcely any attention to this question. A single 

 one, the Baron of Eiviere, presented, in 1840, to the Central Society of 

 Agriculture, some ver^' learned and sensible retiections upon ichthyology 

 regarded in its relations to the wants of man and the profits of agricul- 

 ture.* He insisted especially on the advantages which would result 

 from taking in the spring the houirom or little eels which abound at the 

 mouths of rivers, and dispersing them in the lakes, ponds, pools, and 

 even muddy ditches, where they live very well. He satisfied himself 

 that they might be transported alive in casks full of water, without 

 appearing to suffer much from it ; but wherever it should be possible to 

 use rivers or canals, he thought it better to make use of boats pierced 

 witli holes in communication with tlie water, such as are frequently used 

 for keeping fish. In this memoir of M. de Riviere, the word pisciculture is 

 used for the first time ; he employs it with hesitation to indicate this 

 new branch of rural economy, which, says he, is still to be created. 



II. 



The year 1848i saw a new era commence in France for the economy of 

 the waters. We believe it is just to say that if the applicatiou of arti- 

 ficial fecundation to the repopulating of rivers is owing to a German 

 naturalist, it is in our country that pisciculture has grown, has been per- 



In his work published in 1848, (Fish ni Rivers and Streams, a treatise on the pi-oduc- 

 tiou and manageuient offish in fresh water by artiiicial spawning, breeding, and rear- 

 iiio-, showing also the cause of the dejiletion of all rivers and streams, by Gottleib 

 Boccius, Loudon, John Van Voorst, Paternoster, Row, 1848,) after describing appa- 

 ratus for the incubation and care of eggs he says, on page 32: "Six years have I suc- 

 cessfully carried out this arrangement with trout in a fishery not far from London, 

 which is now the richest stream in the south of Euglaud. The principle of artificial 

 spawning I have been acquaiuted with as far back as 1815;" after which he describes 

 the processes of artificial fecundation of eggs. 



The statement made by Boccius to Milne-Edwards, repeated by M. Coste and subse- 

 quent writers, that he applied the art of artificial fecundation in Euglaud in 1841, 

 seems to indicate an inconsistency with referencs to the dates. The evidence from his 

 first work has, of course, no bearing upon the matter other than to indicate that he 

 had not practiced the art at the time of preparing the book. But his claim in his 

 second book, that for six years he had practiced the art, would not carry him back to 

 the autumn of 1841, unless it were the fact that the manuscript had been prepared 

 more than a year before the date of publication. — J. W. M. 



* Memoirs of the Central Society of Agriculture, vol. xlviii, p. 171, 1840. 



