48 PKOSB HAXIEUTICS. 



to their own interests and aggrandisement, regardless 

 of the 'hygiene publique/ and at the expense of the 

 ' grande nation!' In England's monastic days, before 

 our sea-fisheries were what they have now become, and 

 when the transmission of fish was most precarious and 

 expensive, stews were de rigueur; but when we were at 

 length emancipated from the thraU of Rome, and the 

 tyranny of a forty days' penance upon lenten fare with 

 nothing but carp at least twice a week in the larder, though 

 there were plenty of geese in the pond, men by degrees 

 used the privileges they had obtained, and converted 

 their stews into arable and pasture land. That land has 

 now become very valuable, and as ague has ceased to 

 hold his court in Lincolnshire, and frogs to give even- 

 ing concerts suh dio, it is not likely they will ever be 

 reproduced. 



The plan of stocldng rivers with fish ab ovo has been, 

 after the lapse of many centuries, revived by two Vosges 

 fishermen, Gehin and Remy (Frenchmen, like dogs, do 

 most things in couples), who have not only propagated 

 salmon, carp, pike, tench, and perch; but declare that 

 the procedure is applicable to all fresh-water fish, and to 

 those which, though living partly in fresh water and partly 

 in the sea, spawn in rivers. They have thus, by dint of 

 natural sagacity (for they are uneducated men) re-esta- 

 blished a very ancient practice, and succeeded in stocking 

 the streams and rivers of a great part of France, — those 

 in the vicinity of Allevard, Pontcharra, La Buisse, and 

 Grenoble, in the department of the Isere ; and others in 

 the departments of the AlUer, Lozere, Mouse, Haute 

 Sa6ne, etc., where either the original supply was ex- 

 hausted, or where there had never before been a supply. 



