CLASS Y. PISCES: PISCICULTUEE. 
485 
ing of fishes. The celebrated naturalist Milne Edwards, a member of the French Institute, was 
appointed by the govei-nment to examine the proceedings of these persons, and after an elabor- 
ate investigation, he made a report fully verifying their success. The attention of M. Coste, Pro- 
fessor in the College of France, had been drawn to this subject, and investigating it with admi- 
rable sagacity, he published his views, thus spreading before the world all the facts necessary to 
the actual and practical culture of fishes. The question of priority of discovery between various 
parties has given rise to some controversy, the result of which seems to be that Messrs. Gehin and 
Remy are entitled to the credit of having commenced, as early as 1842, the artificial fecundating 
of the eggs, and breeding fishes from them, this being the true point of discovery. That this 
could be done was of course known to naturalists so accomplished as Milne Edwards and Pro- 
fessor Coste,* and when they found it to be not only practicable, but practiced with positive 
success, they added the lights of science to the discovery, thus establishing and extending its 
utility. The experiments of Professor Coste, especially, were of the greatest practical importance, 
and the results of his investigations being published, speedily disseminated the knowledge which 
had been acquired, over the world. In France the government founded an establishment at Ilun- 
ingen, in the department of the Upper Rhine, which went into operation in 1852, and has been 
entirely successful in breeding fishes ; being a government establishment, it supplies eggs of the 
best varieties to every department of France. The actual product of fishes by artificial breed- 
ing in France at the present time is great, and promises to be of the utmost national importance. 
In England, Mr. Boccius, a civil engineer, appears to have been employed in the artificial 
breeding of fishes as early as 1841, that is, a year prior to the first attempts of Gehin and Remy, 
and being successful, had as early as 1842 hatched in various streams as many as two millions 
of trout. In 1853 the breeding of salmon was commenced at Stormontfield, near Pertji^ in Scot- 
land, and the results w^ere truly marvelous. In May, 1854, about two hundred thousand smolts, 
which had been hatched in the ponds, were put into streams connected with the sea. At this 
time they were about seven inches long, and weighed half an ounce to two ounces. In August 
they returned, and having been marked, were easily recognized. It was found after an absence 
of two months they had increased to three, five, seven, and even nine pounds in weight ! 
The fact that trout, salmon, pike, and other fishes may be thus artificially bred, and with enor- 
mous profit, is well established by these and many other experiments in difterent parts of Europe. 
Experiments have been made in this country, especially by Robert L. Pell, Esq., at Pelham, 
Ulster County, New York, and by Dr. T. Garlick and Prof H. A. Ackley, of Cleveland, Ohio, and 
indeed by many others, verifying the general results which we have stated as having been ob- 
which Mr. Gehin could not precisely determine, the little lish appear about the size of pins, come out of their cells 
between the interstices of the gravel, and seek in the tranquil waters, near the shore, a place of safety. 
"Having thus discovered nature's secrets, it remained to discover a mode of rendering them practically useful, 
and not until after many failures did Gehin and Remy hit upon a sure process, incontestably superior even to that 
of nature herself. This may be deemed too bold an assertion, but a moment's reflection will prove its truth." 
* The discovery and practice of the artificial breeding of fishes date back as far as 1763, when the results of thirty 
years' research on the part of a German named Jacobi, were published in Hanover. In this memoir, it appears that 
the author proceeded upon an exact knowledge of the habits of trout, salmon, &c., and imitating them, he actually 
hatched and propagated fishes in nearly the same manner as was afterward done by Gehin and Remy, Professor 
Coste and others. The knowledge of these facts, certainly in the possession of scientific men, still appears to have 
lain practically dormant for nearly a century ; but in 1837, Mr. Shaw, and soon after Mr. Boccius, commenced making 
experiments in England, probably instigated by the discoveries of Jacobi. They were entirely successful, and the 
result has been the actual breeding of fishes in Great Britain to a very large extent. The operations of Gehin and 
Remy began at a later date, that is, in 1842 ; but they proceeded without instruction from any extraneous source, and 
though not the first to discover and put in practice this new art, they were real inventors, and in consequence of the 
enlightened and energetic following up of their system by the French government, have been the means of a rapid 
dissemination of knowledge on the subject throughout the civilized world. 
It appears by the late work on Pisciculture, by Eugene Noel, that in the Encyelopedie NouvelU, published in Paris, 
in 1842, a note was added to the article Organogenie, by Dr. Serres, in which the following passage occurs : " The 
physiologist can put in a vase, eggs not fecundated, and in another zoosperms ; in pouring the latter upon the former, 
he creates animals at will." Here seemed a general philosophic statement of the principle of the system of which 
we are treating. 
It may be added that, according to the authority of M. Coste, it was by recourse to this method of multiplication 
that Messrs. Agassiz and Voght procured all the embryos necessary for their studies on the development of the Palee, 
a species of salmon in the Swiss lakes, the anatomical history of which these two naturalists published in 1842. 
