Fish so fed and treated, advance in size rapidly, though not to any great weight; as the kind (a species of perch) which came under observation, never arrive at much more than a pound avoirdupois; but from the length of three or four inches, when first put in, they grow to eight or nine in a few months, and are then marketable. Drafts from the pond are then occasionally made; the largest are first taken off, and conveyed in large shallow tubs of water to market: if sold, well; if not, they are brought back and replaced in the stew, until they can be disposed of. This business of fish-feeding is so managed that the stock are all fattened off about the time the water is most wanted for the garden-crops. The pond is then cleaned out, the mud carefully saved, or spread as manure,—again filled with water, stocked with young fry, and fed as before. An intelligent Chinaman, from whom the writer had the above detail, and who showed him as much of the process as could be seen during a residence of three months, declared as his belief, that a spot of ground, containing from twenty to thirty square yards, would yield a greater annual profit as a stew, than it would in any other way to which it could possibly be applied. That fish may be tamed, suffer themselves to be caressed, and even raised out of their natural element by the hand, has been long known to naturalists; witness the famous old carp formerly in the pond of some religious house at Chantilly, in France, with many other instances on record. But it is probable no people has carried the art of stew-feeding fish, and practising it as a profitable concern, to such lengths, as is done by the Chinese at this day. I. M. [p236] METEOROLOGICAL DIARY for the Months of June, July, and August, 1827, kept at EARL SPENCER’s Seat at Althorp, in Northamptonshire. The Thermometer hangs in a North-eastern Aspect, about five feet from the ground, and a foot from the wall.