480 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



Although they have both greatly contributed to the success of the 

 undertaking, we now know that the first efforts were solely owing to 

 Joseph Remy, and that he associated Antoine Gehiu with himself only 

 after having alreadjv half succeeded., Remy first studied the habits of 

 the female trout ready to spawn. He saw them remove the gravel with 

 their tails, and rub their bellies to assist the laying of the eggs. Hav- 

 ing caught many of them in this state, he perceived that by pressing 

 them a little with his baud, he could easily force out the mature eggA, 

 and that the same thing occurred with the milt of the males. He next 

 suspended a female above a vase full of water, and by means of a light 

 pressure applied from above downward, he caused the eggs to fall out, 

 upon which he afterward poured, in like manner, the fecundating liquid 

 of the male until the water was white. Next depositing the eggs in a tin 

 box pierced with numerous holes, and spread with a layer of coarse sand, 

 he placed the box in a fountain of pure water, or in the bed of a brook ; 

 after a certain time he saw the young hatched, and freeiug their tails 

 first. 



These facts, which Remy relates himself in a letter addressed, in 1843, 

 to the prefect of the^Vosges, are, as we see, almost identical with those 

 which Jacobi has embodied in his memoir, as these last were with the 

 experiments of Dom Pinchon ; but the two fishermen of La Bresse 

 did not stop there.* It was uot enough to have guarded the eggs 

 against the chances of destruction, which menace them when abandoned 

 to themelves. It was necessary also to insure the development of the 

 young, and to find for them a nourishment suited to the wants of their age. 

 This Remy and G6hin succeeded in doing. After two or three weeks of 

 a diet adapted to these wants, they opened the ifoxes which contained 

 the fry, and allowed them to run freely into a water-chamber or a por- 

 tion of the stream prepared to receive them.* There they had taken care 

 beforehand to raise a great number of frogs, of which the spawn 

 is eagerly devoured by the young trout. Somewhat later they had 

 recourse to the method already employed for the support, in preserves, 

 of adult carnivorous fishes.t 



Remj^ and Gehin first stocked two ponds near La Bresse, several 

 brooks of their canton, the water courses of the commune of Walden- 

 stein, and have thrown about fifty thousand young trout into the Mose- 



*Haxo d'Espinal ou the Artificial Fecundating anil Hatching of the Eggs of Fish, 2d 

 edition, p. 2:2, 1853; and Gnide of the Pisciculturist, 1854. 



t"To nourish their young trout," says M. de Quatrefages, "they hatched with them 

 other smaller species of fish, smaller and herbivorous. These are raised and nourished 

 iipou aquatic vegetables. In their turn they serve for food to the trout, who are nour- 

 ished by flesh. These fishermen have thus succeeded in applying to their industry one 

 of the most general laws, upon which are based the natural harmonies of the animal 

 creation." In view of the necessity of their carnivorous diet, it is important to put 

 together only trout of the same age, otherwise the smaller become the food of the large ; 

 and even with this iJrecaution, it is not always possible to avoid the fatal effects of 

 their voracity. 



