3-011-433 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Experimenting ponds at the Huningue Fish Nurseries, France, 1864. 'France has been the first country to make a commercial use of the discovery [of pisciculture, or fish-breeding]...It is now over twenty years since the French people began the systematic breeding of fish on the artificial principle - i. e., spawning and fecundating by hand manipulation...Millions of eggs are annually collected by the explorateurs of the establishment, and, with a small percentage of loss, these are successfully hatched - first for a brief period at Huningue, and afterwards in the particular water which they are designed to populate. The establishment at Huningue...has been very well and cheaply administered, the annual expenses not being much over £2000, which, when we consider that it collects and distributes from fifteen to twenty millions of fish eggs per annum, cannot be considered at all extravagant...There is, of course, an abundant supply of all kinds of water, and the ponds are used for studying the rate of growth of such of the fish as are kept for study. The principal fishes manipulated for at Huningue are the Rhine and Danube salmon, the Ombre chevalier, the lake and river trout, and the fera - a very plentiful fish'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.