22 THE NEW ART OF BREEDING FISH. 



animals submit to his will and produce at his plea- 

 sure ; he commands the waters to transport him 

 with fearful speed, and soon perhaps the air will he 

 conquered. All nature seems to obey his laws. The 

 fish alone have escaped his dominion, but not his 

 nets. 



Now Mr. Gehin has discovered the secret of their 

 reproduction, and placed in our grasp the means to 

 enliven our rivers and watercourses, as we cover our 

 fields with corn, hemp or flax, as we multiply our 

 flocks, our domestic fowls, our silk worms. 



The discovery of Gehin and Remy is a great fact 

 for humanity, parallel with the introduction into 

 France of the potato. 



Like all other great discoveries, now that we have" 

 it, this seems the simplest in the world. How, we 

 ask ourselves, was it possible for any one to eat 

 fish-roe without thinking of the innumerable fish 

 thus destroyed in the germ, and what would that 

 thought lead to but the search for a mode of prevent- 

 ing such wholesale slaughter and the easy discovery 

 of such a mode ? Yet it took six thousand years to 

 find the right means to solve readily and practically 

 the difiiculty ; and we now have the solution in so 

 simple a form that even the children of fishermen 

 practise it as easily as they would tend a flock of 

 sheep. 



But the most elementary- ideas, which ought to 

 open at once the eyes of the world, are often those 

 which are last taken hold of They seem, indeed, like 



