36 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
them up with equally satisfactory results to the rearing of fish. As 
late as 1805 the twelve little troughs which he used in hatching fish 
eggs, as well as the other apparatus devised by him, were still to be 
seen by those who were sufficiently interested to enquire for them. 
Jacobi was a man of commanding stature and fine personal appear- 
ance. He died, aged seventy-five years; on the 22nd of April, 1784, his 
widow surviving until 1805. He left twelve children, the eldest of 
whom, Gerlach Ferdinand Jacobi, inherited the estate, and, up to his 
* death, in 1825, continued the fish-breeding industries which had been 
established by his father, . 
The “ Father of Fish Culture ” was, in the opinion of Dr. Hapke, one 
of the most important scientific investigators of the age in which he 
lived. A pupil of the renowned Christian Wolf, the disciple of Leib- 
nitz, the predecessor of Kant, he was trained in the best methods of 
the mathematicians and natural philosophers of his day and nation, 
He was unfortunate in being ahead of his time. He wasa citizen of 
one of the smallest of the, at that time, infinitessimally small German 
provinces, and was in the prime of life when the Seven Years’ War 
occurred [1756-1763], and when the social and scientific development 
of Germany was retarded by internal dissensions. He appreciated the 
full scientific and practical import of his discovery and lost no oppor- 
tunity to make it public and to introduce it into general usefulness. 
He himself published papers in various periodicals, and was in constant 
correspondence with the chief naturalists of Germany and France, like 
Butfion, Lacepede, Fourcroy and Gleditsch, while also encouraging 
others to give publicity through the press to the methods and results 
of his labors. A contemporary biographer wrote: “By reason of his 
discovery of the method of artificially fertilizing the eggs of fish, as 
well as many useful discoveries in physics and mechanics, he was well 
known to the academies of Berlin and St. Petersburgh, as well as within 
the narrower limits of his own fatherland.”. [Lippische Intelligenz- 
blatter, 1768, p. 585.] He was so well known throughout the country 
that a letter sent to him from the American Colonies sometime between 
1760 and 1770, and addressed to 7he Trout Culturdst Facobt, Germany, 
passed safely to his address. [HapkkE, Dr. L. Zur Entdeckungsge- 
schichte des Konstlichen Fishzucht. Abhandlungen des Naturwissen- 
schaftlichen Vereins, Bremen, vi., 1876, pp. 157-164.] 
It is claimed by many French writers that the process of artificial 
fecundation was discovered as early as 1420, by Dom Pinchon, a monk 
in the Abbey of Reome. This claim was not advanced unt] 1854, when 
the Baron de Montgaudry called attention to certain manuscript rec- 
ords at that time in his possession, found among the archives of the 
