A ^nopsis of ff)€ History of 

 Pisf) Caltare. 



A COMPLETE history of pisciculture in all its details is, I believe, yet to be 

 written. Much concerning it can be gathered by searching here and there, 

 but no one has seen fit to gather all these fragments together in a continuous 

 story of what has come to be an important factor in furnishing food for the people of 

 a good portion of the world. An encyclopaedia will say that pisciculture was practiced 

 by the ancient Egyptians and that it was in use by the Chinese, and that is all. How 

 it was practiced in Egypt or what use was made of it in China in the dim past is of 

 little moment now, for in all probability the people of those countries at that time 

 knew nothing of fish culture as practiced to-day. The people of this century are 

 given to demanding facts based upon figures, when history is offered to them; and, 

 leaving speculation out of the question, I will recite briefly some of the beginnings of 

 pisciculture. It has been claimed that a French monk, Dom Pinchon, in the Abbey 

 of Reome discovered 

 the process of hatching 

 fish eggs in 1420, but it 

 is believed by those best 

 informed that he sim- 

 ply collected and trans- 

 planted eggs that had 

 been naturally impreg- 

 nated. 



The real father of 

 fish culture, who first 

 fecundated fish eggs 

 artificially, was Stephen 

 Ludwig Jacobi, a Ger- 

 man, born April 28, 

 1 709, at Hohenhausen, 

 in the Province of 

 Varenholz. In 1 741 he 



took eggs and milt from trout by hand and fertilized them artificially, and that 

 was the genesis of modern pisciculture. For hatching trout ova, Jacobi used 

 wooden troughs, the bottom covered with gravel, to represent the natural spawning 



GENESIS OF ANGLING. 



