Celestials carry on a business in selling and hatching fish-spawn, collecting the impregnated eggs from various rivers and lakes, in order to sell to the proprietors of canals and private ponds. When the proper season for hatching arrives, they empty a hen’s egg, by means of a small aperture, sucking out the natural contents, and then, after substituting fish-spawn, close up the opening. The egg thus manipulated is placed for a few days under a hen! By and by the shell is broken, and the contents are placed in a vessel of water, warmed by the heat of the sun only; the eggs speedily burst, and in a short time the young fish are able to be transported to a lake or river of ordinary temperature, where they are of course left to grow to maturity without being further noticed than to have a little food thrown to them. The luxurious Romans achieved great wonders in the art of fish-breeding, and were able to perform curious experiments with the piscine inhabitants of their aquariums; they were also well versed in the arts of acclimatisation. A classic friend, who is well versed in ancient fish lore, tells me that the great Roman epicures could run their fish from ice-cold water into boiling cauldrons without handling them! They spared neither labour nor money in order to gratify their palates. The Italians sent to the shores of Britain for their oysters, and then flavoured them in large quantities on artificial beds. The value of a Roman gentleman’s fish in the palmy days of Italian banqueting was represented by an enormous sum of money. The stock kept up by Lucullus was never valued at a less sum than £35,000! These classic lovers of good things had pet breeds of fish in the same sense as gentlemen in the present day have pet breeds of sheep or homed cattle. Lucullus, for instance, to have such a valuable stock, must have been in possession of unique varieties derived from curious crosses, etc. Red mullet or fat carp, which sold for large prices, were not at all unusual. Sixty pounds we can ascertain as being given for a single mullet, and more than three times that sum for a dish of that fish; and enormous sums of money were lavished in the buying, rearing, and taming of the mullet; so much so, that some of those who devoted their time and money to this purpose were satirised as mullet-millionaires. One noble Roman went to a fabulous expense in boring a tunnel through a mountain, in order that he might obtain a plentiful supply of salt water for his fish-ponds. Sergius Orata invented artificial oyster-beds. He caused, as will be afterwards described when I come to speak of oyster-farming, to be constructed at Baiæ, on the Lucrine Sea, great reservoirs, where he grew the dainty mollusc in thousands; and in order that he and his friends might have this renowned shell-fish in its very highest perfection, he built a palace on the coast, in order to be near his oyster-ponds; and thither