226 Dr. Mac Culloch on the Changing 



the fishery should become a farm in the hands of a lessee. In all 

 these cases it is merely supposed that, as in France and Germany, 

 the object should be the cultivation of fresh- water fish. But if as 

 the views held out in this paper attempt to prove, sea fish 

 can be naturalized in canals, lakes, ponds, and rivers, it is not 

 unlikely that the sources of profit might be materially increased. 

 Experience would in a certain time teach us to know the fish 

 that would live together most usefully for ourselves, that would 

 rather contribute to each other's support and to ours, than to their 

 own mutual extermination. As yet, this is a subject little known, 

 because it has been too much the usage to suppose, that as man 

 cannot live in the same element with a fish, he has no chance of 

 acquiring a knowledge of its habits and pursuits. 



The lakes of Scotland, of the North of England, and of Wales, 

 offer particular facilities for the naturalization of sea fish, on 

 account of the small distance at which most of them lie from the 

 sea, and of the consequent facility of transporting these creatures in 

 a living state. Should such a project ever be carried into effect, 

 the good consequences are obvious. The facility of commanding 

 a supply offish would be increased; while that would also become 

 certain, since it would no longer depend on weather, which so 

 often interferes with the regularity of the sea fishery and of the 

 market. The demand and supply might then also be more ac- 

 curately balanced, as it is in all parallel cases when the steady 

 price of domestic animals for food, is compared with that of those 

 which are the produce only of chance or contingency. It is an 

 unquestionable fact that the produce of fish for consumption may 

 be much increased by the very act of fishing them ; or that a 

 certain proportion may be regularly taken away for use, without 

 diminishing this subaqueous population. It is thus that a profit 

 is made by waters which in their natural state yield no supply for 

 man. Nor, in the sea, is the apparent supply for our uses, ever 

 diminished by any quantity which we can consume, provided that, 

 in some peculiar cases, care is taken not to destroy the ova, or 

 the fish under a certain size. How little attention has been paid 

 to this subject, in sea fishing, is proved by a recent Act of Parlia- 



