surprising manner, sparely fed and densely
packed. Very well, here are ponds and there
are lakes, and there are ten thousand scraps
of barren marshy ground which produce
nothing now, but would make first-rate eel
farms; there are ten times ten thousand of
us, several times told, dining on cheese, or a
small scrap of bacon, or a tantalising taste of
meat, and nothing more; when nothing in
nature hinders us from getting a full meal of
palatable fish. There is no social hindrance
to this good result, but that tenth part of a
prejudice against fish diet which checks the
little capitalist who would be a fish producer,
with the thought that though he may be sure
he can produce cheap fish, yet he is not sure
of obtaining customers. O foolish fish-abjuring
race! the joys of the gourmand, things that
would have been as the apple of the eye to
Heliogabalus himself, the starving Englishman
dislikes to put into his little saucepan, and
thence into his empty stomach; or the knawing
stomachs, peradventure, of his offspring.
And he might come to need a large saucepan,
and many a lean child's face might be made
round and rosy if he would forsake an empty
fancy, and be just to fish. One objection to
some fishes positively is that they are cheap,
and how can things so dirt cheap be clean
eating?  Of pilchards, ten thousand hogsheads,
or twenty-five millions of single fish, have been
taken at one port in a single day.

VVe have talked of eel farms; beside eels,
there are many fishes capable of cultivation.
Carp, for example. In a female carp of ten
pounds weight seven hundred thousand was
the number of eggs found. Carp, too, can
without hurt be carried from one pond to
another. So can tench, a very palatable fish,
that will live on like the eel in spite of all
manner of privations. A piece of water which
had been filled up and used as a rubbish heap,
a mass of weed and mud, with little water,
was directed to be cleared out, and to the
surprise of the diggers nearly two hundred
brace of tench and as many perch (another
fish worth farming) were discovered. Finally,
under the roots of an old tree, a queer-looking
animal was seen, perhaps an otter. It proved
to be a tench which had grown into the exact
shape of the hole in which it had been many
years confined. It weighed eleven or twelve
pounds. There are pike, too; but then they
are very hungry fellows, greedy after other
fish. But they grow large, and as for their
tenacity of life, it is said that a pike was taken,
in the year 1497, to which there was a brass
ring attached with this inscription: "I am
the fish which was first of all put into this
lake by the hands of the Governor of the
Universe, Frederick the Second, the 5th of
October. 1230." So that fish was, quoth the
legend, two hundred and sixty-seven years
old. It weighed three hundred and fifty
pounds.

Never fear innovation. Fish were in favour
in the good old times. Here is a gentleman's
idea of his Saturday's dinner in the seventeenth
year of the reign of Henry the
Eighth:—

"First, leich brayne. Item, frommetye
pottage. Item, whole ling. Item, great
jowls of salt sammon. Item, great salt eels.
Item, great salt sturgeon jowls. Item, fresh
ling. Item, fresh turbut. Item, great pike.
Item, great jowls of fresh sammon. Item, great
ruds. Item, baked turbuts. Item, tarts.

"Second course. Martens to pottage. Item,
a great fresh sturgeon jowl. Item, fresh eel
roasted. Item, great brett. Item, sammon
chines broiled. Item, roasted eels. Item,
roasted lampreys. Item, roasted lamprons.
Item, great burbutts. Item, sammon baken.
Item, fresh eel baken. Item, fresh lampreys
baken. Item, clear jilly. Item, gingerbread."

Fish in those days were patronised, and
almost every old hall or abbey had its
attached fish-ponds or stews. Landed
proprietors in our own day might make good use
of them, said Gottlieb Boccius, in 1841. A
gentleman, he says, possessing land to spare,
should have three ponds; one, say number
one, a little higher than the others, should be
of three acres in extent, connected by a sluice
with number two, of perhaps four acres, and
number three, with five acres of surface. It
is well for these ponds if they be blessed with
refuse drainage from the neighbourhood, if
they have not sterile clay bottoms, and are
not overhung by vegetation. The ponds
should shelve gradually for five or six yards,
and have a depth of from three to five feet
in the centre. They should be kept full, if
possible, but not allowed to rise above due
bounds. "To stock the ponds with brood,
the following simple calculation is sufficient
for direction; viz., to every acre of water in
extent put in two hundred brood carp, twenty
brood tench, and twenty brood jack; thus
making ten per cent, each of tench and jack
to the carp: the brood must be all of one
season's spawn. Therefore, to three acres
there will be six hundred carp, sixty tench,
and sixty jack; and the succession ponds
are to be stocked in like proportions;
the second the year following the first,
and the third again a year later, so that
each pond then comes round in its turn to be
fished."

"Again," says Mr. Boccius, " a given space
of water can produce only a certain quantity
either of vegetable matter or animalcules: by
storing only the proper number of fish adapted
to the water, the weight, in three years, will
prove equal to what it would have been had
twice the number been placed therein. By
overstocking the water, the fish become sickly,
lean, and bony; and, on the contrary, when
the regulations are attended to which I have
laid down, the fish will be healthy, fleshy, and
fat. In stocking ponds, it must be strictly
observed that the jack, carp, and tench be all
of the same season, or spring spawn. The
period for brooding the pond with these fish is