The Harvest of the Sea : a Contribution to the Natural and Economic History of the British Food Fish

PREFATORY NOTE.

IT is not my intention to inflict upon the reader a formal Preface. It would, however, be ungrateful were I not to take an opportunity of acknowledging the aid and information kindly afforded by various Members of the French Government; also by Professor Coste of the French Institute ; M. Coumes of Strasbourg; the Authorities at Huningue ; the Intendant of the Jardin d'Acclimatisation of Paris ; Mr. Robert Buist; Mr. John Cleghorn ; Jonathan Couch, Esq. of Polperro ; Mr. H. Dempster; Thomas Ash-worth, Esq.; Mr. Kobert Cowie ; Mr. R P. Scott; Edward Cooke, Esq., RA, to whose kindness I am indebted for the characteristic Sketches of " The Angler Fish" and " Jack in his Element."

So far as I am aware, this is the first work in which an attempt has been made to bring before the public in one view the present position and future prospects of the Food Fisheries of Great Britain. Great pains have been taken to obtain reliable information and correct statistics, but in so wide a field of labour considerable allowance must be made for errors.

The excellent Fish Groups have been arranged and drawn by Mr. Stewart, the Natural History draughtsman of this city; while the Sketches of Fishing Scenes on Lochfyne and elsewhere are by Mr. J. R Prentice.


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.... The modern phase of pisciculture is entirely a commercial



one, which as yet does not lie in imparting fanciful flavours to the fish—although, if such were wanted, it might easily enough be accomplished—but has developed itself both at home and abroad in the replenishing of exhausted streams with salmon, trout, or other kinds of fish. The present idea of pisciculture, as a branch of commerce, is due to the shrewdness of a simple French peasant, who gained his livelihood as a pecheur in the tributaries of the Moselle, and the other streams of his native district, La Bresse in the Vosges. He was a thinking man, although a poor one, and it had long puzzled him to understand how animals yielding such an abundant supply of eggs should, by any amount of fishing, ever become scarce. He knew very well that all female fish were provided with tens of thousands of eggs, and he could not well see how, in the face of this fact, the rivers of La Bresse should be so scantily peopled with the finny tribes. Nor was the scarcity of fish confined to his own district: the rivers of France generally had become impoverished; and as in all Catholic countries fish is a prime necessary of life, the want of course was greatly felt. Joseph Eemy was the man who first found out what was wrong with the French streams, and especially with the fish supplies of his native rivers— and better than that, he discovered a remedy. He ascertained that the scarcity of fish was chiefly caused by the immense number of eggs that never came to life, the enormous quantity of young fish that were destroyed by enemies of one kind or another, and the fishing-up of all that was left, in many instances, before they had an opportunity to reproduce themselves; at any rate, without any care being taken to leave a sufficient breeding stock in the rivers, so that the result he discovered had become inevitable.

The guiding fact of pisciculture has been more than once accidentally re-discovered—that is, allowing that the ancient Romans knew it exactly as now practised ; but nothing came



of such discoveries, and till a discovery be turned to some practical use, it is, in a sense, no discovery at all. After being lost for many hundred years, the art of artificially spawning fish was re-discovered in Germany by one Jacobi, and practised on some trout more than a century ago. This gentleman not only practised pisciculture himself, but wrote essays on the subject as well. His elaborate treatise on the art of fish-culture was written in the German language, but also translated into Latin, and inserted by Duhamel du Monceau, in his General Treatise on Fishes. Jacobi, who practised the art for thirty years, was not ...