Vol XIV. 



ROCHESTER, N. Y., JULY, 1853-. 



No. VII. 



THE CULTIVATION OF FISH. 



The time is not very remote when the cultivation of fish will become an important 

 branch of rural iinUi^try in the United States. Our climates, lakes, rivers, creeks, 

 and the artificial ponds that may be formed for purposes of irrigation, ornament, and 

 fish-culture, will furnish admirable facilities for the breeding, feeding, and indefinite 

 multiplication of the finny tribe. Some may suppose that the propagation of fish, even 

 by the union of art mvl science, will not pay. Experiments, however, in France and 

 Switzerland, now in progress, leave no room for reasonable doubt as to the profitableness 

 of the labor expended in producing this article of human food ; for physiological science 

 has rendered those disposed to engage in pisci-culture a service that will completely 

 revolutionize the business and avoid most of the hazards and losses hitherto experienced. 

 It is our purpose to render this new process in the breeding of fish plain to the unlearned 

 man or boy who ever caught one by hook, spear, or net. 



Like other animals, fish are of both sexes — male and female. Everybody has seen 

 the eggs of the female ; but e\-erybody has not studied the natural instincts by which 

 these eggs are fertilized as they are deposited on the ground. Now, it is this study, or 

 strictly scientific research, imited with practical exj)eriments in propagating fish, that has 

 brought to light the great improvements in fish culture, to which attention is invited. 

 The exceedingly, numerous eggs of fish are hatched by the genial warmth of the sun 

 while h'ing in pure running water. Hence instinct prompts most fish to ascend from 

 deep lakes, bays, and the ocean, all streams that flow into them in order to deposit their 

 spawn and hatch their young, which descend with their parents to the sea or lakes 

 where they find the aliment that brings them to full maturity. The impregnation of 

 the spawn is precisely similar to that witnessed in the fertilizing of the silk on the 

 embryo ears of corn by the anthsi- dust that falls from the tassels of the plant and rests 

 upon the ends of the silk. Without the contact of the yellow dust upon the stigmas, 

 not a kernel of corn would grow, however rich the soil. It is equally impossible to 

 obtain a fish from the egg of a female without the contact of the fertilizing atoms 

 derived fi'om the system of the male. This much has long been known ; but it was not 

 known that one could gently express by the hand both the spawn from the female and 

 the sperm from the male into warm, clean, running watei*, such as nature uses for hatch- 

 ing the eggs of fish, and thus multiply them by indefinite millions. Yet this operation 

 (one of the simplest imaginable) is now successfully performed, and young salmon trout, 

 shad, perch, and other fish, are transported in water from one stream or pond to another 

 •with as much facility as the scions of choice fruit trees are conveyed from one orchard 

 or country to another. 



The facility with which young fish may be multiplied from a few mature ones, under 



