[15] THE STATUS OF THE FISH COMMISSION. 1153 



England until improved varieties of carp are introduced from Germany, 

 as they have been in this country. 



A kind of pond culture appears to have been practiced by the ancient 

 Egyptians, though in that country, as in ancient Greece and Rome, the 

 practice seems to have been similar to that now practiced in the lagoons 

 of the Adriatic and of Greece, and to have consisted in driving the 

 young fish of the sea into artificial inclosures or vivaria, where they were 

 kept until they were large enough to be used. 



The dis(^.overy of the art of artificially fecundating the ova of fish 

 must apparently be accredited to Stephan Ludwig Jacobi, of Hohen- 

 hausen, in Westphalia, who, as early as 1748, carried on successful 

 experiments in breeding salmon and trout. 



The importance of this discovery was thoroughly appreciated at the 

 time, and from 1763 to 1800 was a fruitful subject of discussion in Eng- 

 land, France, and Germany. George III, King of England, in 1771 

 granted to Jacobi a life pension. Upon the estate of Jacobi, by the 

 discoverer and his sons, it was carried on as a branch of agriculture for 

 nearly eighty years — from 1741 to 1825 — though it was nearly one hun- 

 dred years before public opinion was ripe for a general acceptance of its 

 usefulness, a period during which its practice was never entirely aban- 

 doned by the Germans. 



The establishment in 1850 at Huningue,in Alsace, by the French Gov- 

 ernment of the first fish-breeding station, or "piscifactory," as it was 

 named by Professor Coste, is of great significance, since it marks the 

 initiative of public fish culture. To this establishment the world is in- 

 debted for some practical hints, but most of all for its influence upon the 

 policy of governments. The fortunes of war and conquest have now 

 thrown Huningue into the hands of the German Government. The art 

 discovered in Germany was practiced in Italy as early as 1791 by Bufa- 

 lini; in France in 1820 j in Bohemia in 1824; in Great Britain in 1837; in 

 Switzerland in 1842; in Norway, under Government patronage, in 1850; 

 in Finland in 1852; in the United States in 1853; in Belgium, Holland, 

 and Eussia iu 1854; in Canada about 1863; in Austria in 1865; in Aus- 

 tralasia, by the introduction of English salmon, in 1852, and in Japan 

 in 1877. 



Sponges have been successfully multiplied by cuttings, like plants, in 

 Austria and in Florida. 



Oysters have long been raised in artificial inclosures from spat natur- 

 ally deposited upon artificial stools. The eggs of the American and 

 Portuguese oysters have at last, however, been artificially fecundated 

 and the young hatched, and in July, 1883, Mr. John A. Ryder, an as- 

 sistant in the United States Fish Commission, solved the most difidcult 

 problem in American oyster culture by devising a mechanical device for 

 preventing the escape of the newly-hatched oysters while swimming 

 about prior to fixation.* The English oyster, being hermaphrodite, or 



*Biilletiu United States Fish Commission, pp. 17-31, 1884. 

 H. Mis. QS 73 



