CHAPTER XXI

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROMAN AND MODERN PISCICULTURE

With the opinion held by some, that the method of breeding fish employed by the Romans was practically the same as that of the modern Pisciculturists, Badham[734] seems to agree, when he remarks: “The plan of stocking rivers with fish _ab ovo_ has been, after the lapse of many centuries, revived by two Vosges fishermen, Gehin and Rémy,” and “they have thus re-established a very ancient practice, and succeeded in stocking the streams of France.”

But this is a total misconception. It can only have arisen from ignorance either of what is found in Latin writers, such as Columella, or of what is the nature of the method used by Rémy and, with great improvements, by present Pisciculturists.

Shortly, the Roman method collected from the bottom of a river or a marsh eggs, already fertilised in the natural manner by fish, and removed them to other lakes or _vivaria_.

Rémy and his successors catch and strip the females of their eggs, which are pressed out into a pan. They then extrude the milt of the male on to the eggs, in a proportion, differing according to what fish are being spawned, of one male to one or more female. They next place the eggs on perforated wire or other trays fixed in long boxes, over and under which water of a regulated temperature passes.[735]

The erroneous view of those of Badham’s school needs correction. By tracing historically the various and not generally known discoveries which led to our modern practice of fish-breeding I hope to prove that the process of the Romans differed from ours. For this reason I subjoin a short _résumé_ showing why and how Pisciculture as we term it and know it came about.[736]

The same demand for fish, the same dearth of fish, which compelled the enactment in mediæval Europe of stringent laws protecting fish, spawn, and fry, caused in ancient China and Imperial Rome the breeding of fish in lakes and _vivaria_ by non-natural methods, and in Europe from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century the quest of an unnatural or artificial method.

Laws aimed at repairing the dearth of fish—a very serious economic matter when all Europe observed frequent fast days—caused by destruction of spawn and of fish during the breeding seasons by human and animal agencies, were made in England as early as the reign of our Ethelred II., who in 996 forbade the sale of any young fish.[737] Malcolm II. of Scotland fixed the times and conditions under which salmon fishing was permitted. Under Robert I. the willow of the bow-nets had to be two inches apart, so as to allow a passage for the grilse. In 1411 Robert III. punished with _death_ anyone taking a salmon in the close season. The Kings of France were not idle. Many ordinances fix the meshes of the nets and the length of saleable fish.

The first known attempts at fish-breeding were made by the Chinese and Romans. M. Haime asserts that “we have no positive data as to the epoch in which the Chinese began their experiments, although everything shows that they reach back to the most remote antiquity.” The address of Mr. Wei-Ching W. Yen dates the epoch as probably that of Tao Chu Kung, who lived in the fifth century B.C.[738]

In Rome considerable trade was done in the sale of young fish for stocking waters. In China the commerce in fish eggs was on a vast scale and extremely lucrative. The Jesuit missionary Du Halde writes, “Le gain va souvent au centuple de la dépense, car le Peuple se nourrit en partie de Poissons.”[739]

The method, however, of both the Chinese and the Romans was to gather eggs, _already naturally fertilised_, lying at the bottom of, or adhering to weeds in, the water. The Chinese went farther by employing special traps of hurdles and mats to bar the rivers and catch the eggs deposited on these.

During the long interval between the Roman Empire and the eighteenth century, we note little or no progress in the rearing of fish, although preserves became numerous in Italy and France. Kings and nobles were zealous and jealous in making and maintaining artificial ponds. Charlemagne the Great personally ordered the repairing of old and digging of new ponds. By sales from their _vivaria_, and by heavy royalties from their fisheries the religious communities amassed large revenues.

Towards the end of the Middle Ages new methods to counter the scarcity universally prevalent, despite the teaching in the thirteenth century of Peter of Vescenza, were eagerly sought. Dom Pinchon, a monk of the Abbey of Réome, seems the first to have conceived the idea of artificially fecundating the eggs of trout. He pressed out in turn the milt of a male and the eggs of a female into water, which he then agitated with his finger. He placed the resulting eggs in a wooden box, with a layer of fine sand on the bottom, and a willow grating above and at the two ends. The box till the moment of hatching was immersed in water flowing with a gentle stream.

The process—described in a manuscript dated 1420, but not published till about 1850—naturally led to no practical results. Consequently Pinchon’s claim to be the father of modern Pisciculture—a term first used some three hundred years after his death—can hardly be sustained. His discoveries interest only from a historical point of view.

The middle of the eighteenth century witnessed an improvement on Pinchon’s plan. In Sweden (where the care taken to protect fish even prohibited the ringing of bells at the spawning season) the bream, perch, and mullet attach their eggs either to rocks, or twigs of pine.

Lund shut up males and females for three or four days in three boxes, furnished with twigs of pine, etc. (on which the fish spawned), and pierced with little holes to allow the entrance of water. He succeeded at his first attempt in raising from 50 female bream, 3,100,000 fry; from 100 perch, 3,215,000 fry; and from 100 mullet, 4,000,000 fry.

Jacobi of Westphalia, the first real inventor of practical fecundation by artificial means, experimented on trout and salmon for sixteen years before attaining definite success.

He pressed in turn the eggs and milt into a vase half filled with water which he kept gently stirred with his hand. The fertilised eggs were at once placed in a grated box inside a larger chest, in which Jacobi had inserted at the sides and at the top fine metallic gratings to allow the easy flow in and out of water over the sand or gravel lying at the bottom. The apparatus was set in a trench by the side of a brook, or, better still, in an artificial channel into which springs were led. The young fish after hatching lived for three or four weeks on their umbilical sac, and were then passed into a reservoir.

By these simple means Jacobi, who for his services was granted by England a pension for life, solved the problem of protecting fertilised eggs against their enemies, and yet of leaving them in surroundings not unlike those of Nature. The experiment, as far as it went, succeeded admirably.

In Great Britain[740] Shaw, Andrew, Young, Knox, and Boccius, and in Germany, Blooch, and others carried on, at various times and with varying methods and measures of success. In France little or nothing was done, except by Quatrefages, till we reach the two peasants, Rémy and Gehin, whose labours laid firm the foundation on which all subsequent Pisciculturists have built.

In 1849 the Academy of Sciences learned that a prize had been granted in 1845 by the Society of the Vosges to two fishermen of La Bresse, Rémy and Gehin, for having fertilised and artificially hatched eggs from trout, and for having raised some five to six thousand trout from one to three years old, which continued to thrive in the waters in which they were confined.

On investigation by the Academy, it was found that Rémy and Gehin (who came in later) had been led from conclusions based entirely on their own observations (for “they are quite unlettered and ignorant of the progress of the Natural Sciences”) to employ with success methods rather similar, but superior, to those of Jacobi.

They had enormously decreased the high mortality by their greatest and probably unique achievement, _i.e._ provision for the fry of a natural food. This was produced by the simultaneous rearing of a smaller and non-cannibal species, and by the collection in the enclosed streams or made waterways into which the young trout were liberated of hundreds of frogs, whose spawn afforded an excellent subsistence.

Jacobi’s and Rémy’s discovery was the parent of our modern Pisciculture. The gear and apparatus, especially in America, have been transformed. The methods of stripping, of hatching, of feeding are enormously improved, with mortality in eggs and fry incredibly reduced.

From this account of their discoveries and from the nature of the methods now in use, it is obvious that the suggestion of Badham and others that the method of breeding fish employed by modern Pisciculturists was practically that of the Romans must go by the board.

From a Fifth Century B.C. _Scyphos_, made by the potter Hieron and painted by the artist Makron, from Furtwängler and Reichhold, _Griech. Vasenmalerei_, Vol. II., Pl. 85. See n. 1, p. 295.]

FOOTNOTES:

[734] _Op. cit._, p. 48.

[735] In the case of Trout, the _ova_ can be successfully transported to South Africa or even to New Zealand, as the period of incubation is a long one. After hatching, the alevins, fry, or young fish can be utilised to stock fish ponds, or other waters.

[736] Cf. an article in the _Revue des deux Mondes_, for June, 1854, by M. Jules Haime.

[737] According to _Magna Carta_, c. 33, “all kydells [dams or weirs] for the future shall be removed altogether from the Thames and the Medway, and throughout all England, except on the sea-shore.”

It was for over 500 years held that this was a measure intended to safeguard the passage of fish, but W. S. McKechnie, _Magna Carta_ (Glasgow, 1914.) pp. 303 ff., 343 ff., has shown that it aimed at removing hindrances to navigation, not to ascending fish.

[738] _Op. cit._, 376, but see Chinese chapter.

[739] _History of the Chinese Empire_ (Paris, 1735), vol. I. p. 36.

[740] Leonard Mascall, owing to his recipes for preserving spawn in his _Booke of Fishing_ 1590, “must be looked upon as the pioneer of fish-culture in England,” according to Mr. R. B. Marston, _op. cit._, 35.