INTRODUCTION. 



" THEREFORE, honorable and worthy conntrymen, let not the mean- 

 ness of the word fish distaste you, for it will afford as good gold as the 

 mines of Guiana or Potosi, with less hazard and charge, and more cer- 

 tainty and facility." Smith's Hist, of Virginia. London, 1624; page 248. 



THESE words of the original John Smith, written some two 

 hundred years since, were prophetic. Spite of the sneers and 

 scorn of the ignorant, to which few have been more exposed than 

 ourselves, and spite of the wails of would-be pisciculturists, who, 

 dazzled by the imaginary balance-sheets of hypothetical trout 

 farms, have rushed ignorantly into fish-farming and become dis- 

 gusted that the mines of Guiana or Potosi were not at once 

 opened to them, fish culture, in the hands of able and perse- 

 vering individuals, has proven to be a thorough and complete 

 success. That many have failed, there is no doubt ; but com- 

 pared to the number of those whose fortunes have been wrecked, 

 if not upon the mines of Guiana and Potosi, upon other equally 

 unprofitable investments, the number is few indeed. Fish cul- 

 ture, like farming, is a branch of industry which, strange to 

 say, is generally though erroneously supposed to require little 

 or no study. We have known numbers of cases in which large 

 sums of money have been invested in fish culture by tyros, whose 

 only knowledge had been gained from a few articles in the 

 columns of a newspaper, or from the only original American 



