356 Fishing m Ameeican Waters. 



come more numerous and of wider scope, was merged in the 

 side issue of the " parr question," which absorbed attention, 

 as indicated by an important article in Blackwood of that 

 year upon the " Transmutations of the Salmon." 



The first person in France who seriously called general at- 

 tention to the study and practice of artificially stocking the 

 waters was Baron de RivUre. He urged the peculiar advan- 

 tages obtained by leading the young eels from estuaries up 

 artificial streams, and capturing them, to distribute in con- 

 venient proportions throughout the waters of France. 



In the history of modern pisciculture a little event occurred 

 without noise in 1844, in the Department of the Vosges, which 

 gave rise a few years later to much excitement. 



A fisherman of ia Bresse, in the commune of Remiremont, 

 situated in one of the most elevated parts of the canton of 

 Saulxures — Joseph Bemy by name — having seen the trout, 

 at other times numerous in the streams of the mountains, di- 

 minishing so fast as to produce grave prejudice to his indus- 

 try, the rivers and the brooks in the Vosges having been 

 dried up by a long drought in 1842, sought from Nature a 

 remedy. This humble man, endowed with a spirit of obser- 

 vation, studied with intelligence the habits of the trout from 

 the moment of hatching, until he arrived at the idea of artifi- 

 cial fecundation, and, by numerous experiments, finally suc- 

 ceeded in arranging the hatching apparatus into compart- 

 ments, as it is done at this day, though commencing, like 

 Jacobi, by placing the fecundated ova in a trough, with 

 wire-grating cover and ends in the trout-stream, letting the 

 natural running of the stream hatch the eggs, which were 

 slightly covered with gravel in the trough. 



Rdmy, chagrined at not knowing any person with means 

 from whom he might hope for assistance by communicating 

 his discoveries, became melancholy and fell sick, when he 

 confided his secret to the keeper of the little tavern where 

 he boarded, by name Antoine Oehin. This inn-keeper was 

 to him a coUaborateur, and soon became full of zeal both as 



