T’AO’S ISLANDS—HEN HATCHES FISH! 463 
not only in China, but in the world! Living in the early 
fifth century B.c. he antedates the Roman Varro, our earliest 
authority, by some three hundred years. He not only bred, 
but wrote about fish. But to brother-breeder and brother- 
writer of the present century like myself, the process as set 
forth in his Yang Yu Ching (Treatise on Fish-breeding), is not 
only difficult to follow in detail, but sadly lacking in result. 
As an example, take his method with the bastard carp, or 
Carassius pekinensis. ‘“‘In order to breed from the chi fish, 
it is ripped up with a bamboo knife, and small quantities of 
quicksilver, mixed with river sediment, and yu-ts’ai are intro- 
duced into the belly. The fish is then stuffed with cabbage 
leaves, and hung up for forty-nine days”’ (note here, the time is 
pre-ordained, and alters not, as with us nowadays, with changes 
in the temperature of the water flowing over the eggs) “in an 
empty place, after which river water is used to extract one or 
two eggs from the belly. These are placed in water, and covered 
up with something, and after a while each egg turns into a 
fish.”’ 
Such ingenious industry, coupled with no small expenditure 
on quicksilver, yu-ts’a1, and cabbage, deserved a far better 
return. Had Fan Li intelligently anticipated a method in vogue 
among his countrymen some two and a half millennia later, 
money, labour, time, would all have been saved. But as Rome 
was not built in a day, so centuries were necessary for the 
evolution of a method of fish-hatching absolutely (to me) unique. 
“Not once or twice in its rough”’ world’s story must the 
ample, yet guileless, bosom of the domestic hen have swelled 
with anticipatory pride, and subsequent resentful curiosity, 
as the results of her ‘‘ watchful waiting ’’ emerged in guise of 
ugly ducklings, swans, or cormorants. 
But of all the sittings to borrow her body’s warmth, the 
strangest and the most incongruous—after all, the ducklings 
were terrestrial, of a kith akin to her, and not aquatic and un- 
registered aliens—was that composed of hundreds of jish eggs ! 
Lest this last sentence seem to label me as a descendant of 
1 Biog. Dict., 540. Li’s fish-ponds are mentioned in the Wu Yueh Ch’un 
Ch’iu, or Annals of the States of Wu and Yiieh. 
