Salmon at the Antipodes. 



Oysters were successfully cultivated in Lake 

 Avernus, near Naples, a reservoir since dried 

 up by volcanic upheaval, and afterwards at 

 Lago Fusaro, where the industry has been 

 continued up to the present day. The arti- 

 ficial care of eels and other fish has been 

 pursued successfully near Yenice, at a lagoon 

 about 140 miles in circumference, called 

 Comacchio, where very extensive works have 

 been constructed, and arrangements made 

 for the care of eels from the time they leave 

 the sea as tiny worms, till they are ready for 

 market. But in all these instances there was 

 no artificial fecundation of ova, and fish 

 culture, as now understood, was then practi- 

 cally unknown. 



The first discovery of the possibility of the 

 artificial impregnation of fish ova was made 

 in the fifteenth century, by a monk named 

 Pinchon, the record of which was disinterred 

 three centuries later by the German naturalist 

 Jacobi, who described accurately the method 

 practised by Pinchon. But the subject does 

 not seem to have been then taken up, and the 

 discovery of Pinchon remained practically un- 

 known, until, in 1840, two fishermen named 



