ON SMALLEE PONDS. l&l 



or stews, maintaining fish of various sizes, in which, 

 probahly, the fish were nursed and fed until fit for the 

 table ; and no doubt many a noble tench, fat carp, and 

 luscious eel, made rich and savoury by aU the varied 

 receipts of monastic cookery, humbled the bereaved 

 stomachs, and mortified the flesh of abbot, and friar, 

 and reverend prior at Stanton Harcourt, in the days 

 gone by. Alas ! what a spectacle greets us now : 

 choked with weeds and mud, green with slime and 

 •filth, fetid with corruption, used as a farm-yard ad- 

 junct to wash sheep in, they stand an evidence of 

 knowledge that has departed, an industry destroyed, 

 and a need that is stupidly and wastefully ignored. 



More or less, this is too. much the state of nine- 

 tenths of our fish-ponds ; from supplying our needs 

 liberally they have become rather dangerous nuisances. 

 In Holland, where, as I have stated, this subject is 

 properly studied and understood,^ the ponds are 

 usually made in series of two, three, or more, commu- 

 nicating by hatches with one another ; so that when 

 one is drained, the others may remain full, and each or 

 aU. of them can be raised or let down at pleasure. One 

 or the other of them is usually drained down and left 

 dry yearly, or every year or two, for some months, 



* And whence we, with almost bouudlesa resources for the 

 culture of eels, export more than half of our supply of eels. 



