8 



the first experiments which proved its truth. Having 

 taken a female trout about to spawn, he pressed out her 

 eggs, and then pressed on to them the milt of a male. 

 After a certain number of days, he had the satisfac- 

 tion of seeing young fish produced, which grew and 

 flourished. Another German naturalist, Jacobi by name, 

 made, a few years later, a similar experiment, with a like 

 result ; and, going a step farther, he actually caused the 

 milt to breed fish from the eggs of a dead female. In 

 Italy, Spallanzani successfully experimented in a similar 

 manner on the spawn of toads, and of certain descriptions 

 of fish. At a later period, experiments were made with 

 success on the eggs of salmon in Scotland by Dr. Knox, 

 Mr. Shaw, and one or two others. And here in England 

 the same sort of thing has been done. 



But as we have already intimated, it never entered 

 the mind of any of these great savans nor of their suc- 

 cessors nor of the tens of thousands of persons who, 

 in different countries, have made the natural history of 

 fish a subject of study that this way of breeding fish 

 was something more than a simple scientific experiment, 

 curious but useless, that it was of practical and com- 

 mercial, political and social importance, inasmuch as it 

 might be made a new branch of commerce, which would 

 add greatly to the national wealth, give employment 

 to thousands, create an inexhaustible supply of cheap, 

 nourishing, and wholesome provisions for all classes of 

 the people and be, in short, to rivers and waters what 

 agriculture is to land. 



For this glorious but singularly simple idea, the world 

 is indebted to two humble fishermen, named Gehin and 

 Eemy, of an obscure village called La Bresse, in the de- 

 partment of the Vosges, in France. 



