6 An Anglers Paradise. 
to a successful issue that which has taken many years of patient 
study and toil to establish, in the case of those now successfully 
carrying on fish farms in this and other countries. I say this 
most emphatically lest anyone should be deceived. 
But there is a most important and valuable branch of fish 
culture which ought to be carried on by most if not all of those 
who possess the facilities for it, and this is the growing of the fish 
themselves after they have been reared on a fish farm. This is a 
work in which anyone possessed of ordinary intelligence can 
advantageously engage, after having studied the subject a little ; 
and my chief object will be to show how a large percentage of the 
waters running waste in this country may be utilized, and great 
benefit derived from their successful cultivation. The work is 
now being done, and can be done again in hundreds of other 
places. Fish culture is nothing new after all, but there is no need 
to repeat at length its ancient and modern history here. I referred 
to that subject in a pamphlet I published nearly twenty-five years 
ago, and it has been well traced out by many other writers. It 
will suffice, therefore, to say that fish culture was known to, and 
carried on extensively by, the Ancients; and even in later times 
our abbeys and monasteries possessed extensive fish ponds, traces 
of which remain in fairly good preservation to the present day. 
A few which I have inspected may perhaps some day be again put 
to their proper use; they might then pay a dividend. Fish cul- 
ture is successfully carried on in China, and has been, I believe, 
from time immemorial. 
It was commenced in New Zealand over twenty years ago, 
but on a very,small scale indeed at first, eight hundred trout ova 
being successfully hatched in the year 1868, which were obtained 
from the natural spawning beds in Tasmania. Now we find that 
the first introduction of trout into Tasmania was effected in 1864, 
a small number of eggs being sent out from this country by 
Frank Buckland, Mr. Youl, and Mr. Francis Francis, the number 
being about two thousand seven hundred altogether. As a result 
of the importation of trout ova into Tasmania and their cultivation 
there, we find in four years that country sending ova, taken from 
fish on the natural spawning beds, to New Zealand. We find 
also that those eggs were successfully hatched there, and from 
