NINTH ANNUAL MEETING. 45 
Fish constitute one of our most valuable sources of nourish 
ment. They live upon matter dissolved and suspended in the 
water, or found on the bottom of streams, takes, and the ocean, 
and thus gather for us nutritive material, which without them 
would be inaccessible to man. And since cheap and wholesome 
food is fundamental to the material prosperity, culture, and even 
the morality of a people, it follows that fish-culture may be made 
an important factor of our national welfare. 
Ideem myself particularly fortunate in the opportunity of 
presenting this topic to an Association which has done, and is 
doing, so much to further the good cause of fish-culture. 
THE TASTE FOR ‘FISH; 
I think, is a thing that advances with the advance of civilization. 
The taste of different civilizations vary, however. We read of 
Roman nobles who were in the way of paying twenty-five hun- 
dred sesterces (one hundred dollars) for a single lamprey, and 
twelve thousand and even twenty-five thousand sesterces for a 
six-pound mullet, and considered only the livers and gills of 
these fish fit to set before an emperor. We are told that they 
sent ships to foreign lands for fish; that they built reservoirs 
for breeding them at home; that they fed them with veal soaked 
in human blood, and even with the flesh of slaves sacrificed for 
the purpose. But this was part of an imperial shoddyism that 
would devote four hundred thousand sesterces to a single ban- 
quet, whose guests were content with gross cooking and grosser 
accompaniments if they could be regaled with peacocks’ brains 
and singing birds’ tongues. 
The fish to please the taste of the members of this Associa- 
tion would be served with less splendor and more wholesome 
sauce. We of to-day ask for palatable and nutritious food, and, 
_ with the increasing culture of our palates and consequent call 
} 
for variety, we demand more and more kinds, and larger and 
larger quantities of fish. 
THE FLESH OF FISH. 
The flesh of fish does not differ essentially from that of mam- 
