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.
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].