42 REPORT ON ARTIFICIAL FISH CULTURE. 



being ignorant of prior discoveries, and wishing 

 to find some remedy for the decrease and threat- 

 ened extinction of their trade, employing several 

 years of their time in laboriously making over 

 again the same experiments already made by the 

 physiologist I have cited, and in rediscovering 

 what naturalists had been acquainted with for a 

 century. 



But if these poor peasants of Bresse were 

 preceded in their researches by scientific men, 

 and if they have not enriched natural history 

 with fresh discoveries, their labors are no less 

 worthy of interest, and they have a claim upon 

 our consideration, for they seem to have been 

 the first among us to make practical application 

 of the discovery of artifical fecundation to the 

 rearing of the fish, and have thus the merit of 

 creating in France a new branch of industry. 



The first essays of Messrs. Gehin and Bemy 

 were made in 1842. Having by a long course of 

 observation become acquainted with the mode of 

 reproduction practised by trout, and being assured 

 of the possibility of artificially fecundating its 

 eggs, they applied themselves to the production 

 of quantities of these fish to stock the streams 

 of the canton. Success crowned their efforts, 

 and notwithstanding their feeble resources, and 

 the difficulties of all sorts they had to en- 



