CORMORANTS—FISH-BREEDING 461 
“‘ Now enter villagers,’’ who as soon as feeding ceases, rush 
to the bank and by drums, gongs, and every conceivable noise 
frighten the cormorants. Heavy from over-repletion, they 
have, before they can fly, to lighten themselves of most of their 
meal, which in due time provides the peasants’ supper! This 
method, if it does not appeal to the palate, possesses the merit 
of semi-poetic and retributive justice.} 
De Thiersant’s assertion that to the Chinese belongs the 
honour of being the first to invent pisciculture can only be 
allowed to pass, if the term be restricted to hatching out by 
natural means, bringing up, and caring for young fish. From 
this, pisciculture proper differs as chalk from cheese. Originated 
by Rémy in the last century, it consists of artificial fecundation 
by the extrusion and mixture of the milt of the male and of 
the eggs of the female, the hatching out of the eggs on specially 
constructed trays of wire, etc., set in running water, and the 
nurture of the fry on specially adapted food in carefully prepared 
and graduated ponds. 
De Thiersant himself, a few pages later,2 makes the point 
clear. Chinese fish-breeders do not resort to artificial fecunda- 
tion, with which they were even in 1870 very faintly acquainted, 
for several reasons, not least of which was their contention that 
fish thus produced were predisposed to quick deterioration.’ 
The Chinese (like the Roman) method of fish-breeding in 
the eighteenth century,‘ and till 1872, consisted in gathering 
from collecting fences constructed for the purpose 5 eggs which 
had been fertilised naturally. These were carried (sometimes 
hundreds of miles, for the secret of safe transportation had 
early been mastered) to ponds or streams for natural, not 
artificial hatching. The young fry were guarded carefully, 
and fed most watchfully. 
Gray ® enumerates some of the many and minute precautions 
1 Blackwood’s Magazine, March, 1917, p. 32. 
2 Op. cit., V. 
3 The ichthyologists divided fresh-water fishes into two kinds—Yeh yii, 
wild, and Chia y#, tame fish: the former cannot live, much less propagate 
their species, in waters lacking a stream. 
4 Du Halde, op. cit., vol. I. p. 36 f. 
5 The Yz of a pond, according to the Shan ?’ang ssii k’ao, was the name of 
“‘ a fence of bamboo set up in the water, and used for rearing fish.” 
8 Op. cit. ch. XXX, 
