CHAP, in.] RE-DISCOVERY OF PISCICULTURE. 73 



one, which as yet does not lie in imparting fanciful flavours 

 to the fish although, if such were wanted, it might easily 

 enough be accomplished but has developed itself both at 

 home and abroad in the replenishing of exhausted streams 

 with salmon, trout, or other kinds of fish. The present idea 

 of pisciculture, as a branch of commerce, is due to the shrewd- 

 ness of a simple French peasant, who gained his livelihood as 

 a pecheur in the tributaries of the Moselle, and the other 

 streams of his native district, La Bresse in the Vosges. He 

 was a thinking man, although a poor one, and it had long 

 puzzled him to understand how animals yielding such an 

 abundant supply of eggs should, by any amount of fishing, 

 ever become scarce. He knew very well that all female fish 

 were provided with tens of thousands of eggs, and he could 

 not well see how, in the face of this fact, the rivers of La 

 Bresse should be so scantily peopled with the finny tribes. 

 Nor was the scarcity of fish confined to his own district : the 

 rivers of France generally had become impoverished ; and as 

 in all Catholic countries fish is a prime necessary of life, the 

 want of course was greatly felt. Joseph Eemy was the man 

 who first found out what was wrong with the French streams, 

 and especially with the fish supplies of his native rivers 

 and better than that, he discovered a remedy. He ascer- 

 tained that the scarcity of fish was chiefly caused by the 

 immense number of eggs that never came to life, the enor- 

 mous quantity of young fish that were destroyed by enemies 

 of one kind or another, and the fishing-up of all that was left, 

 in many instances, before they had an opportunity to repro- 

 duce themselves ; at any rate, without any care being taken 

 to leave a sufficient breeding stock in the rivers, so that the 

 result he discovered had become inevitable. 



The guiding fact of pisciculture has been more than once 

 accidentally re-discovered that is, allowing that the ancient 

 Romans knew it exactly as now practised ; but nothing came 



