THE ART OF FISH CULTURE.
BY PROF. G. BROWN GOODE.
PART II.
There are two forms of fish culture. One of these, which has been practiced for many centuries in China, and perhaps quite as long in Europe, consisted in the transportation of living fish from waters in which they were abundant, to other waters, depleted or naturally deficient in fish life. The carp and the goldfish have been so long domesticated that they have become modified, like domestic fowls and cattle. The goldfish was introduced into all parts of the world from China, centuries ago. The introduction of the carp into the United States by the efforts of our Commissioner of Fisheries has been one of the most extensive operations in fish culture ever attempted. In 1878 carp were brought from Bavaria, and from this stock, planted in Babcock Lake, over 300,000 young fish have been distributed, in lots of ten to twenty, to every part of the country, so that almost every county is now stocked with this valuable food fish. As early as 1770 some experiments in transplanting fish were attempted, at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin and others. In 1854, the black bass, now so abundant in the Potomac, were introduced by an engineer on the B. & O. R. R., who brought them over the Alleghenies in the water tank of his engine. This fish has also been sent to England and France, where it bids fair to become a favorite. In 1873, a car was freighted with eastern fish designed for introduction into the waters of California. The car ran off the track in Nebraska, and the rivers in that region are now stocked with our best fishes.
Far more important than fish transportation and the acclimation of foreign species, is the art of fish breeding, by which it is possible to keep up the supply of fishes in waters into which they have been successfully introduced. It was in the year 1741 that Stephen Ludwig Jacobi, a wealthy landed proprietor and civil engineer of northwestern Germany, discovered the method of artificially fertilizing the eggs of fish for the purpose of restocking ponds and streams, and began a series of painstaking experiments with that end in view. He first conceived the idea in 1725, when a youth of seventeen years, and was successful after laboring for sixteen years. His discovery was not announced till 1763. Although his discovery was thought to be of interest, and was used by physiologists and students of embryology, it was not until the French government resolved to make a grand experiment in stocking the waters of France with fish that modern industrial fish culture was born.
The establishment in 1850 at Huningen, in Alsace, by the French government, of the first fish-breeding station, or “piscifactory,” as it was named by Prof. Coste, is of great significance, since it marks the initiation of public fish culture. To this establishment the world is indebted for some practical hints, but most of all for its influence upon the policy of governments. The fortunes of war and conquest have now thrown Huningen into the hands of the German government. The art discovered in Germany was practiced in Italy as early as 1791 by Bufalini, in France in 1820, in Bohemia in 1824, in Great Britain in 1837, in Switzerland in 1842, in Norway, under government patronage in 1850, in Finland in 1852, in the United States in 1853, in Belgium, Holland, and Russia in 1854, in Canada about 1863, in Austria in 1865, in Australasia, by the inhabitants of English Salem in 1862, and in Japan in 1877.
The history of fish culture in this country is so familiar to every one who has the slightest interest in the subject that it seems unnecessary to refer to it in this place, except to show that it was largely to the growth of popular interest in the subject that the Fish Commission has owed its original and since increasing support.
The establishment of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries in 1871 marked the beginning of a period of great activity and great progress in fish culture, which has been quite without parallel elsewhere. The duties of the Commissioner were thus defined: “To prosecute investigations on the subject (of the diminution of valuable fishes), with the view of ascertaining whether any and what diminution in the number of food fishes of the coast and the lakes of the United States has taken place; and, if so, to what causes the same is due; and also whether any, and what protection, prohibitory or precautionary measures should be adopted in the premises, and to report upon the same to Congress.”