THE KEW AET OF BREEDING FISH. 17 



necessity of watching the process of hatching, with 

 the view to opening the boxes soon after. 



ON THE PRESERVATION AND TRANSPORTATION . OF 

 THE fiGGS. 



In some sections of country, when many crops 

 have, been gathered from the same plot of ground, it 

 becomes in a degree exhausted, and, whether to im- 

 prove it for the same or prepare it for another kind 

 of crop, it is usual to overflow it, converting it into a 

 fish pond and stocking it with carps and tench. 

 After three or four years the water is drawn off, the 

 fish taken and sold, and the land cultivated. A few 

 years having elapsed it is again overflowed, but need 

 not again be stocked with fish, as they now appear, 

 as it were, spontaneously. We have the evidence of 

 numerous observers as to this fact, and among others 

 the inhabitants of a commune near Grrenoble. They 

 state-that there is a little lake on the side of a hill in the 

 commune of Jarrie, not far distant from their town, 

 which is well stocked with carps and tench. Some- 

 times the lake dries up and the ground is then cul- 

 tivated with hemp and yields abundantly ; and again 

 it is filled with water, and carps and tench appear in 

 great quantities. 



, The river Drac has a wide bed, and the current 

 at times makes new channels or retakes old ones 

 which have dried up ; in the pools of these old chan- 

 nels soon appear quantities of trout whose size shows 



