352 Fisuine in AMERICAN WATERS. 
duces me to impute its origin to the monks—those men of 
genius who invented eau da vie—and who were ever engaged 
in investigations for ameliorating the wants of mankind. 
They found the waters idle, while the needs of the Church 
demanded that they should produce. They therefore ap- 
plied themselves to the study of cultivating the waters, and 
in the fourteenth century — according to Baron Montgau- 
dry, nephew to Buffon—Dom Pinchion, abbé of Réome, had 
discovered the plan of hatching fishes in boxes, the process 
described being quite similar to that now employed. The 
needs of the monastic orders for complying with the require- 
ments imposed by their religion may be justly considered the 
motive cause which urged to this great discovery; and the 
monks not only cultivated the waters, but they left records 
of their progress, and gave us their opinion that the carp is 
the most profitable fish to propagate, and next in order is 
the tench. The pike is considered very useful to prevent 
the excessive multiplication of carps, for otherwise they soon 
become too numerous for their healthy condition in a pond. 
At divers epochs the idea prevailed of introducing certain 
fishes into barren waters. The Lake Lovitel,in the depart- 
ment of Z’Jseve, never nourished a fish before 1670, when M. 
Garden placed trout in the lake, and they multiplied so that 
the lake has remained stocked with them ever since. 
La pécherie of Comachio, on the Adriatic, is of very ancient 
origin. Bonaveri, and, more recently, Spallanzani, professor 
in Reggio, Modena, and Pavia, have described the very exten- 
sive eel-fisheries there. In spring, when the eels ascend the 
rivers, the fish-farmers open communications from the basins 
to the lagunes of the sea, and the young eels penetrate in 
great masses through all the free passes. Retained in the 
basins, where they find nourishment abundant, they grow 
rapidly. At the time when their instinct teaches them to 
descend to the sea, the fish-farmers lead them by small artifi- 
cial brooks whereby they are conducted into chambers from 
which they have no power to escape, and hundreds of thou- 
