28 ANGLING LITERATURE OF 



shrewdness he says, "We have no time, my dear, to 

 lose : if man's estate be, as we are told it is, a soap 

 bubble at the best, much it behoves an old fellow like 

 me, whose eightieth birthday is at hand, speedily to put 

 his house in order, because he departs out of life." He 

 then goes on to descant on the best manner of rearing 

 and feeding cattle, fowls, bees, &c. ; and, lastly, on the 

 advantages to be derived from an economical method of 

 managing fish-ponds. These he divides into two kinds 

 fresh and salt water reservoirs. The first are within the 

 means of the poor man ; but the latter are only for the 

 luxury of the rich, on account of the expenses entailed 

 in their construction. 



Columella gives, in his De Re Rmtica, a more minute 

 account of these vivaria. He recommends them to be 

 made on moor or waste land, because they then entail no 

 cost, save for the mere construction. It is advisable to 

 make ponds as near the ocean as possible ; and if a com- 

 munication can be effected with it to the reservoir, it is 

 so much the better, because then the waters of the stews 

 never stagnate : " thus imitating the great waters whence 

 they are derived, which, never being of the same tem- 

 perature, are in perpetual movement, and renewed every 

 hour." But the most noticeable thing in his work is, 

 that the Eomans in making their ponds turned lakes and 

 rivers into them, and this they found to be the sure means 

 of depositing in them not fish only, but the spawn of all 



