70 CHINESE PISCICULTURE. [CHAP. in. 



in the rice-fields. One Chinese mode of collecting fish-spawn 

 is to map out a river into compartments by means of mats 

 and hurdles, leaving only a passage for the boats. The mats 

 and hurdles intercept the spawn, which is skimmed off the 

 water, preserved for sale in large jars, and is bought by persons 

 who have ponds or other pieces of water which they may wish 

 to stock with gold or other fish. One Chinese plan is to 

 hatch fish-eggs in paddy-fields, and in these places the spawn 

 speedily comes to life, and the flocks of little fishes are herded 

 from one field to another as the food becomes exhausted. 

 The trade in ova is so well managed, even in the present day, 

 that fish are plentiful and cheap so cheap as to form a large 

 portion of the food of the people ; and nothing so much sur- 

 prises the Chinese who come here as the high price that is 

 paid for the fish of this country. A Chinese fisherman was 

 much astonished, three years ago, at the price he was charged 

 for a fish-breakfast at Toulon. This person had arrived in 

 France with four or five thousand young fish of the best 

 kinds produced in his country, for the purpose of their being 

 placed in the great marine aquarium in the Bois de Boulogne. 

 Being annoyed at the comparative scarcity of fish in France, the 

 young Chinaman wrote a brief memoir, showing that, with the 

 command of a small pond, any quantity of fish might be raised 

 at a trifling expense. All that is necessary, he stated in the 

 memoir alluded to, is to watch the period of spawning, and 

 throw yolks of eggs into the water from time to time, by which 

 means an incredible quantity of the young fry are saved from 

 destruction. For, according to the information conveyed by 

 this very intelligent youth, thousands of young fish annually 

 die from starvation they are unable to seek their own food 

 at so tender an age. We cannot believe all the stories we 

 hear about the Chinese mode of breeding fish, they are so 

 evidently exaggerated ; but I must notice one particularly 

 ingenious method of artificial hatching which has been resorted 



