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.
[Illustration: THE RAPE OF HELEN.[741]
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.