88 AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. 



watched till it is ready to be despatched to some district in 

 want of it." 



After describing the manipulation of fish to procure the 

 ova, and discussing the probabilities of exhausting the 

 streams of Germany and Switzerland by receiving such large 

 supplies of fish-eggs from them, this writer continues : — 



" It would scarcely pay to breed the commoner fishes of 

 the rivers, as carp, pike, and perch. The commonest fish 

 bred at Huningue is the fera* whilst the most expensive is 

 the beautiful ombre chevalier, the eggs of which cost about 

 a penny each before they are in the water as fish. The 

 general calculation, however, appertaining to the operations 

 carried on at Huningue, gives twelve living fish for a penny. 

 The fera is very prolific, yielding its eggs in thousands ; it 

 is called the herring of the lakes, and the young, when 

 first bom, are so small as scarcely to be perceptible .... 

 I inquired particularly as to the Danube salmon, but found 

 that it was very diflScult to hatch, especially at first, great 

 numbers of the eggs, as many sometimes as 60 or 70 per 

 cent., being destroyed; but now the manipulators are 

 getting better acquainted with the modus operandi, and it 

 is expected, by and by, that the assistants at Huningue 

 will be as successful with this fish as they are with all 

 others. . . ." 



" Up to the season of 1863-64, the total number of fresh- 

 water fish-eggs distributed from Huningue, was for above 

 110,000,000, and nearly half of these were of the finer 

 kinds of fish; there being no less than 41,000,000 of the 



* A species of Coregonus, similar to our small Whitefish. 



