514 EEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



favorable results wliicli had been obtained are at the present day in 

 danger of being lost. 



The idea has been broached of replacing Hiiningeu by an establish- 

 ment iu France organized on the same plan, bnt your excellency will 

 see from the concluding part of my report that, in order to meet satis- 

 factorily the demands of pisciculture, you ought to increase the number 

 of establishments by diminishing the importance of each one. 



Professor Joly, of Toulouse, has, in 1866, published a report on river 

 pisciculture in Fj-ance, which gave rise to the brightest hopes. The dis- 

 asters which have fallen on our unfortunate country have again made all 

 this questionable ; but if we have lost Hiiningeu, the laboratory of 

 the College of France still exists and continues the work commenced 

 at another period under such brilliant auspices. From that institution 

 comes the impetus, and I had new proof of this during the tour which I 

 have just made through Switzerland, Austria, and Italy. 



2. — Switzerland. 



Switzerland, more than many other countries, has profited from 

 the new science of pisciculture, and the progress made in that country 

 deserves to be widely known. The federal government, the cantonal 

 governments, and private individuals saw that this science contained a 

 new and fruitful source of wealth for a country whose waters are of 

 such excellent quality and are so well distributed. Pisciculture has 

 made Switzerland its adopted country. Establishments have been 

 founded by cantons and by private individuals. To these last men- 

 tioned the State granted great privileges, and the flshing-laws protect 

 them, and at the same time favor their experiments. 



In Switzerland, as in France, the number of fish in rivers and lakes 

 decreased rapidl}^, and in spite of their great wealth of fish it was high 

 time to remedy this matter. Artificial pisciculture has supplied the 

 remedy, and at present the fish increase as fast as they are destroyed. 



Before reviewing the establishments which I have visited, I must 

 mention a fact selected from a large number: the inhabitants of the 

 village of Vallorbe, near Jougne, about twenty years ago lived from the 

 fisheries in the river Orbe. By exhausting this river, which was espe- 

 cially rich in the salmon kind, without ever replenishing it, the fishers 

 and their families were reduced to absolute want. The observations of 

 Eemy, confirmed b}'^ experiments made at the College of France, reached 

 the ears of the schoolmaster of the village ; he first studied pisciculture 

 theoretically, and finally attempted some experiments, which were 

 crowned with success. The inhabitants of the village anxiously but 

 somewhat incredulously followed the different phases of the artificial 

 hatching of fish-eggs, whi(;h went on under the most favorable condi- 

 tions. The village became interested in these experiments, and several 

 hundred francs were annually appropriated for aiding the schoolmaster 

 in his enterprise. At the present day the river ,swarms with fish, and 



I 



i 



