he resorted when he wanted to have a fish-dinner free from the care and turmoil of business. Many of the more luxurious Italians, imitating Sergius Orata, expended fabulous sums of money on their fish-ponds, and were so enabled, by means of their extravagance, to achieve all kinds of _outré_ results in the fattening and flavouring of their fish. A curious story, illustrative of these times and of the value set on fish of a particular flavour, is related, in regard to the bass (_labrax lupus_) which were caught in the river Tiber. The Roman epicures were very fond of this fish, especially of those caught in a particular portion of the river, which they could tell by means of their taste and fine colour. An exquisite, while dining, was horrified at being served with bass of the wrong flavour, and loudly complained of the badness of the fish; the fact being that the real bass (the high-coloured kind) were flavoured by the disgusting food which they obtained at the mouth of a common sewer. 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 _pêcheur_ 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 Remy 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.