290 ROMAN AND MODERN PISCICULTURE 
The erroneous view of those of Badham’s school needs 
correction. By tracing historically the various and not 
generally known discoveries which led to our modern practice 
of fish-breeding I hope to prove that the process of the Romans 
differed from ours. For this reason I subjoin a short résumé 
showing why and how Pisciculture as we term it and know it 
came about.! 
The same demand for fish, the same dearth of fish, which 
compelled the enactment in medieval Europe of stringent 
laws protecting fish, spawn, and fry, caused in ancient China 
and Imperial Rome the breeding of fish in lakes and vivaria 
by non-natural methods, and in Europe from the fourteenth 
to the nineteenth century the quest of an unnatural or artificial 
method. 
Laws aimed at repairing the dearth of fish—a very serious 
economic matter when all Europe observed frequent fast 
days—caused by destruction of spawn and of fish during the 
breeding seasons by human and animal agencies, were made 
in England as early as the reign of our Ethelred II., who in 
996 forbade the sale of any young fish.2 Malcolm II. of 
Scotland fixed the times and conditions under which salmon 
fishing was permitted. Under Robert I. the willow of the 
bow-nets had to be two inches apart, so as to allow a passage 
for the grilse. In 1411 Robert III. punished with death any- 
one taking a salmon in the close season. The Kings of France 
were not idle. Many ordinances fix the meshes of the nets 
and the length of saleable fish. 
The first known attempts at fish-breeding were made by 
the Chinese and Romans. M. Haime asserts that ‘‘ we have no 
positive data as to the epoch in which the Chinese began their 
experiments, although everything shows that they reach back 
to the most remote antiquity.’’ The address of Mr. Wei-Ching 
1 Cf. an article in the Revue des deux Mondes, for June, 1854, by M. Jules 
Haime. 
2 According to Magna Carta, c. 33, ‘‘ all kydells [dams or weirs] for the 
future shall be removed altogether from the Thames and the Medway, and 
throughout all England, except on the sea-shore.”’ 
It was for over 500 years held that this was a measure intended to safe- 
guard the passage of fish, but W. S. McKechnie, Magna Carta (Glasgow, 
1914,) pp. 303 ff., 343 ff., has shown that it aimed at removing hindrances to 
navigation, not to ascending fish. 
