462 CHINESE FISHING 
as to shelter and food. Rockeries were erected in the ponds to 
shelter the alevin from the sun. Bananas were planted on 
the sides and banks, because the rain which falls from their 
leaves during a shower promoted health. Forbidden, however, 
were all pigeons, whose dung was held hurtful, and also (con- 
trary to our experience of the haunt of many and good fish) 
all willows, whose leaves were deemed inimical to the growth, 
even to the life of the fry. 
“ The earliest pisciculturist of ancient China,’ states Mr. 
Yen, “ was T’ao Chu-kung,! who lived in the fifth century B.c. 
His method of fish culture combined both knowledge and 
ignorance. He dug a pond of the size of an acre, leaving nine 
small islands scattered about it. In one pond he placed twenty 
female carp, three feet in length, and four males of similar size. 
This was done in the month of March. Exactly one year later, 
there were 5000 fishes one foot long, 10,000 two feet long, 
and 15,000 three feet long. In the third year the number had 
multiplied ten or twenty times, in the fourth year it was not 
_possible to keep count.” 
While congratulating T’ao on the nimbleness of his enume- 
rators and his success, and haggling not at the numbers (for 
the Cypride breed prolifically), both the disparity in growth 
and the similarity of the exactly graded variations in size of 
these, all yearling, fish are unto the practical pisciculturist a 
stumbling-block, which neither cannibalism nor luck of food 
can displace. 
But to return to T’ao, or rather to his islands. ‘‘ The 
nine islands were to deceive the fishes, who would believe that 
they were in the big ocean, travelling round the nine continents.” 
We may complacently smile at these fancies, but at any rate 
let us humbly recall the 2300 years we took to solve the 
problem of the generation of eels, and the fantastic theories 
propounded by Aristotle, by Izaak Walton, and others, some 
of which, e.g. the Cairncross, read as ludicrous as T’ao’s “‘ Happy 
Isles.”’ 2 
Fan Li apparently was the first to practise fish breeding 
1 Op. cit. This is but another name assumed by Fan Li. 
2 See antea, 251 ff. 
