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]