352 FISHING IN AMERICAN WATERS. 



duces me to impute its origin to the monks those men of 

 genius who invented eau da vie and who were ever engaged 

 in investigations for ameliorating the wants of mankind. 

 They found the waters idle, while the needs of the Church 

 demanded that they should produce. They therefore ap- 

 plied themselves to the study of cultivating the waters, and 

 in the fourteenth century according to Baron Montgau- 

 dry, nephew to Buffon Dom Pinchion, abbe of Reome, had 

 discovered the plan of hatching fishes in boxes, the process 

 described being quite similar to that now employed. The 

 needs of the monastic orders for complying with the require- 

 ments imposed by their religion may be justly considered the 

 motive cause which urged to this great discovery ; and the 

 monks not only cultivated the waters, but they left records 

 of their progress, and gave us their opinion that the carp is 

 the most profitable fish to propagate, and next in order is 

 the tench. The pike is considered very useful to prevent 

 the excessive multiplication of carps, for otherwise they soon 

 become too numerous for their healthy condition in a pond. 



At divers epochs the idea prevailed of introducing certain 

 fishes into barren waters. The Lake Lovitel, in the depart- 

 ment of Elsere, never nourished a fish before 1670, when M. 

 Garden placed trout in the lake, and they multiplied so that 

 the lake has remained stocked with them ever since. 



Lapecherie of Comachio, on the Adriatic, is of very ancient 

 origin. Bonaveri, and, more recently, Spallanzani, professor 

 in Reggio, Modena, and Pavia, have described the very exten- 

 sive eel-fisheries there. In spring, when the eels ascend the 

 rivers, the fish-farmers open communications from the basins 

 to the lagunes of the sea, and the young eels penetrate in 

 great masses through all the free passes. Retained in the 

 basins, where they find nourishment abundant, they grow 

 rapidly. At the time when their instinct teaches them to 

 descend to the sea, the fish-farmers lead them by small artifi- 

 cial brooks whereby they are conducted into chambers from 

 which they have no power to escape, and hundreds of thon- 



