6 An Angler's Paradise. 



to a successful issue that which has taken many years of patient 

 study and toil to establish, in the case of those now successfully 

 carrying on fish farms in this and other countries. I say this 

 most emphatically lest anyone should be deceived. 



But there is a most important and valuable branch of fish 

 culture which ought to be carried on by most if not all of those 

 who possess the facilities for it, and this is the growing of the fish 

 themselves after they have been reared on a fish farm. This is a 

 work in which anyone possessed of ordinary intelligence can 

 advantageously engage, after having studied the subject a little ; 

 and my chief object will be to show how a large percentage of the 

 waters running waste in this country may be utilized, and great 

 benefit derived from their successful cultivation. The work is 

 now being done, and can be done again in hundreds of other 

 places. Fish culture is nothing new after all, but there is no need 

 to repeat at length its ancient and modern history here. I referred 

 to that subject in a pamphlet I published more than twenty-five 

 years ago, and it has been well traced out by many other writers. 

 It will suffice, therefore, to say that fish culture was known to, and 

 carried on extensively by, the Ancients ; and even in later times 

 our abbeys and monasteries possessed extensive fish ponds, traces 

 of which remain in fairly good preservation to the present day. 

 A few which I have inspected may perhaps some day be again put 

 to their proper use ; they might then pay a dividend. Fish culture 

 is successfully carried on in China, and has been, I believe, from 

 time immemorial. 



It was commenced in New Zealand over twenty-five years ago,* 

 but on a very small scale indeed at first, eight hundred trout ova 

 being successfully hatched in the year 1868, which were obtained 

 from the natural spawning beds in Tasmania. Now we find that 

 the first introduction of trout into Tasmania was effected in 1864, 

 a small number of eggs being sent out from this country by Mr. 

 Frank Buckland, Mr. (now Sir J. A.) Youl, and Mr. Francis 



*" I am reminded by the Editor of the /'zV/^that the acclimatization of Salmonidce in 

 Tasmania was discussed as far back as 1841 by the Colonists themselves, and it was through 

 the unwearying efforts of Sir J. A. Youl that they were first introduced into Antipodean 

 streams. The names which should be always first recognised in connection with the work are 

 those of Mr. Ramsbottom, of Clitheroe, and Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Brady, and Mr. Edward 

 Wilson, president of the Victorian Acclimatization Society." 



