THE HISTORY OF FISH-CULTTTEE. 483 



molluscs aucl earth-iusects. The little eels, wliicb, on arriving, had an 

 average length of six and seven centimetres, (two and one-half to three 

 inches,) and a circumference of one centimetre, had arrived, after twenty- 

 eight months of this diet, at thirty-three centimetres of length, and seven of 

 circumference. M. Coste^ remarks with reason that the corpses of the 

 vertebrated animals, which are not fit for the food of man, might be 

 made useful in this manner. He adds that the noxious insects would 

 serve quite as well to fatten the fish. '-Thus a great service would be 

 rendered to agriculture, since it would, in the end, be delivered of one 

 of its s ourges." It is to be regretted that the learned i>rofessor has 

 not entered into any details upon the best method of capturing these 

 insects, which the cultivators have so great an interest in getting rid of, 

 even if they could not make a profitable use of them. 



The author of the Practical Instructions upon Pisciculture has been 

 at length induced to take charge of the organization of a vast establish- 

 ment of artificial fecundation. In 1850 the two engineers of the canal 

 from the Khone to the Ehine, Messrs. Detzem and Berthol, after hav- 

 ing visited La Bresse on the invitation of the prefect of the Doubs, had 

 applied at Huningue the method of Eemy and Gehin. Upon the basis of 

 their first experiments they had undertaken hypothetical calculations, 

 from which it appeared that the present population of the waters of 

 France does not exceed twenty-five millions of fish, producing annually 

 less than six millions of francs ($1,200,000) — which figure is really 

 much too large — while, if the process of artificial fecundation were 

 everywhere introduced, the number of fish would be raised, after four 

 years, to three thousand one hundred and seventy-seven millions, 

 and would produce a revenue of nine hundred millions of francs 

 ($180,000,000.)* At Lochlebrunn, some kilometres from Huningue, 

 MM. Detzem and Berthol had established the foundations of a large 

 preserve, wherein 1852 they operated numerous fecundations by means of 

 a hatching-box which in no respect differs from that of Jacobi. They 

 assert that they have there obtained a cross of the trout and salmon. f 



The minister of agriculture directed M. Coste to visit the new estab- 

 lishment. In a report, favorable to the labors of MM. Berthol and 

 Detzem, t the professor of the College of France asked for and he suc- 

 ceeding in obtaining a considerable develoi)ment of the fish-preserve, 

 OY j^isci factory, as he lu'oposed to call it. He brought into use on 

 a large scale a hatching-apparatus, which we shall have to describe, 

 adopted all the measures which he thought most fit; and in his memoir 

 \ upon the means of restocking the waters of France, he undertook, before 

 / the Academy of Science, to make a delivery in June, 1853, of six hun- 

 dred thousand trout and salmon, large enough to be thrown into our 

 rivers. We have not visited the establishment of Huningue, and know 



* Artificial Fecuudation of Fish : iSociety of Emulation of the Doubs, p. 18, 1851, 

 t Report upon the facts proved at Huningue from May 8, 1851, to May 7, 1852. 

 I Practical Instructions in Pisciculture, p. 9G. 



