CHAPTER 1 



HISTORICAL 



PISCICULTURE has been described as ' the art of 

 fecundating and hatching fish-eggs and of nursing 

 young fish under protection till they are of an age to 

 take care of themselves.' Complete, however, as this 

 definition may have been considered thirty years ago, 

 it does not, as we shall presently see, embrace all that 

 is included in the scope of fish culture as understood 

 and practised at the present time. The origin of the 

 art seems to be lost in remote antiquity. It was in 

 China, we are told, that gunpowder was first used ; 

 and it is to the Celestial Empire also that we must 

 go for the earliest examples of fish culture. 1 Straw 

 and grass are, as we learn, tied round posts floated 

 against the current of a river. Hurdles, mats and 

 faggots, too, are attached to wooden posts fixed in the 

 bed of the watercourse. The fishes' spawn floating 

 down with the stream is arrested by these traps which 



1 The Harvest of the Sea, by James G. Bertram. 



