THE PAST AND FUTURE OF FISH 
CULTURE. 7 

An Historical Glance at the Cultivation of the Waters. 

Under the above title Mr. C. Raveret-Wattel has sent 
an interesting paper to be read before the society to-day 
of which I give below an abstract. The paper was ori- 
ginally read at the conference of the National Acclima- 
tation Society, February 27th, 1891. 
The review of the history of fishculture given by the 
author while necessarily brief is very complete. Touch- 
ing lightly upon the efforts of the ancients to preserve 
their fisheries, he comes down to modern times and tells 
us how in the year 1840, during an exceptionally dry 
year, Joseph Remy, a Vosge fisherman, studied the 
habits of trout and took from them spawn and milt in a 
jar filled with water. The eggs proved fertile. This 
discovery having been made, Antoine Gehin contributed 
money to aid Remy in prosecuting his researches. Be- 
fore this, in 1758, one Jacobi, an officer of the Princi- 
pality of Lippi-Detmold, had fertilized the eggs of trout 
and salmon and had published his discovery in 1763, but 
it appears to have attracted no attention. 
These discoveries might have been entirely forgotten 
if it had not been that in 1848 a French naturalist, led 
by his scientific studies to consider the subject of the 
increase of fish, presented to the Academy of Sciences a 
work upon this question. M. de Quatrefages, whose 
learning and clear judgment enabled him to recognize 
the importance which the cultivation of the waters would 
one day take on, did not hesitate to state that it was 
possible to sow fish as grain is sown, and from this time 
he proposed to sow the sea. He pointed out the method 
by which the product of ponds could be regulated ; by 
which the eggs of fish could be used for the restocking 
