156 THE HATCHING OF FISH. 



little do we know of the inhabitants of the water ! Man 

 has dominion given him over both land and water. Of 

 the former he has taken every advantage ; from the 

 earliest times there have been agriculturists, or land 

 farmers. Who ever heard of an agriculturist, or water 

 farmer?" We have; and Mr Buckland might have 

 heard of him too, if he had chanced to read a remarkable 

 letter of Mr Kyan de Acuna, published in 'The Field/ 

 August 8, 1857, by Mr Thomas Ashworth, to whom it is 

 addressed : 



"In lieu of pisciculture, which would only include 

 vertebratm, I shall continue" (writes this gentleman, 

 who has obtained the privilege of bringing under culti- 

 vation the waters of Spain) "to make use of the word 

 ' aquceculture,' as including within its signification the 

 other orders of zoology, the cultivation of which, in 

 molluscae and zoophytes, has also been recently prac- 

 tised on principles of sound philosophical induction. 



"Aquasculture has certainly not obtained, up to the 

 present day, that profound attention which its vast im- 

 portance entitles it to. We are in the habit of seeing 

 the earth being cultivated, but our ideas have not yet 

 been awakened to the propriety of cultivating the water 

 likewise. Everybody knows there is a period in the 

 life of human societies, during which even the earth is 

 not cultivated. In that period the spontaneous pro- 

 ductions of the earth suffice to satisfy the necessities of 

 the individuals composing such communities ; but as 

 soon as they are about to abandon the savage state, agri- 

 culture becomes necessary, and consequently it takes 

 rise. The necessity of cultivating the waters, on the 

 contrary, does not show itself before the moment in 

 which communities have acquired a high degree of civ- 

 ilisation, at which time the application of aquseculture 

 becomes no less indispensable than that of agriculture 

 at the instant savage life had to be relinquished. No 

 doubt the cultivation of the water becomes a necessity 

 at a much later epoch than the cultivation of the earth ; 



