36 
THE CALIFOENIAN SALMON. 
from the time they leave the sea as tiny worms, till they 
are ready for market. But in all these instances there was 
no artificial fecundation of ova, and fish culture as now 
understood, was then practically unknown. 
The first discovery of the possibility of the artificial im- 
pregnation of fish ova, was made in the fifteenth century, 
by a monk named Pinchon, the record of which was dis- 
interred three centuries later, by the German naturalist 
Jacobi, who described accurately the method practised by 
Pinchon. But the subject does not seem to have then 
been taken up, and the discovery of Pinchon remained 
practically unknown, until in 1840, two fishermen named 
Bemy and Gehin, in a valley of the Yosges, after years of 
patient watching and intelligent reasoning from the facts 
observed by them, at last discovered the secret, and found 
that the impregnation of the ovum took place after its 
exclusion from the ovaries, and when deposited in the 
gravel, and that the natural process could be imitated 
artificially, thus giving a certain and easy method, for the 
propagation and increase of any kind of river fish. 
The story of the perseverence and patient endeavour, by 
which this discovery was made, has a strong element of 
romance. Concealing himself in the tall grass by the 
side of the stream, or in the overhanging branch of a 
tree by day, and by night when the full moon favoured his 
object ; sustained against fatigue, cold and hunger, by that 
enthusiasm which has aided so many noble eftbrts, Bemy 
desisted not from his pursuit, until he had wrested from 
Nature, the secret which had been so long withheld, and 
which was destined to confer a lasting benefit upon the 
human race. 
It has often happened in scientific pursuits, that a dis- 
covery has been made simultaneously by two enquirers, who 
have arrived at the result by totally different methods. In 
1848, the celebrated French naturalist M. De Quatrefages, 
