like kine and sheep, should be reared and fattened and kept from straying, for the delectation of the palate. That ancient Egypt had fishponds or tanks of considerable extent, fed from the waters of the great river to which the land of the Pharaohs owed everything, we know.

The two mighty Mesopotamian empires had so many mouths to feed, and so many pairs of busy hands at the command of what was at any rate an enlightened despotism, that reservoirs or pools for fish culture are not likely to have been overlooked, whether at Nineveh or at Babylon. But as yet the clay tablet, which shall tell us how the waters of Tigris and Euphrates were led into artificial lakes, whence the scaly spoil could be drawn at will, has not been deciphered. There were fishponds, under Persian rule, in Magnesia, which province was especially assigned to furnish forth the table of the great king, and fishponds in Greece; but these last were in despised Boeotia, the soil and climate of artistic Athens and hardy Sparta being but illadapted to such a provision for the future. To the Roman patrician, whose eclectic appetite impressed into its service all things eatable within the limits of Rome's conquests, fishponds, salt and fresh, were a necessity of life. It was not enough that for him British provincials were scooping up native oysters from what have long been known to us as the Colchester beds; that Africans were spreading fine nets to ensnare the ortolan and beccafico; that Illyrians were pushing the tusky boar from his fastness in the reeds; that Gaul gave him capons, and Corsica pheasants. He must have his preserves of fish as well; the gigantic lampreys swimming slowly round the marble basin in the court, the huge pieces of water laid out by the labour of his slave-gangs, in the Southern Maremma. Juvenal has left us a description-only too true, it may be of the anxieties of the poor fisherman who has brought to shore a very large fish of rare flavour, and who trembles lest some prying exciseman or hanger-on of authority should claim the prize as having lately escaped from the imperial vivaria. There is something touching, as well as grotesque, in the poor fellow's breathless eagerness to carry his finny captive to Cæsar's threshold, before the captor is implicated in some charge of constructive petty treason against the august wearer of the purple, the master whose frown is death.

Wherever the Roman went, along with the remains of his stately aqueducts and carved altars, the tesselated pavements of his villas, and the herring-bone pattern of his matchless brickwork, may be found traces of the fishponds, which were a matter-of-course adjunct to the residence of proconsul or procurator fiscal, goldringed knight or buskined patrician. Caius loved to see the fat fish flap their lazy tails in the still waters of the tank in his impluvium, just as he liked to watch the plump "porcelli" disporting themselves in piggish happiness outside the door of that kitchen, where knife and spit awaited the swinish innocents.

There is much plausibility in the conjecture that the sacred lamprey itself, the weight of which was among Roman amateurs a subject of boastfulness, was no true lamprey, but the greedy, sidespotted, white-fleshed Silurus glanis of the Danube and the Theiss, the Hungarian eel, which our own defunct Acclimatisation Society in vain endeavoured to introduce into British broads and meres ; a supple-skinned giant that would devour fish, frog, or wild fowl, and for whose private tooth my lord Caius, of the Claudian or Julian gens, was popularly believed to toss an occasional butler or black page into the deep still pool of the outer atrium.

China, which so oddly anticipated many of the inventions of the perfervid Western mind-which had gunpowder, petards, rockets, and torpedoes when we put our trust in arrows; a compass when we groped our way by help of the stars; and a printing-press when there was immunity for the clerkly culprit who could write his name-was by many centuries beforehand with us in the matter of fish preserves. The carp, which, according to a rhyming legend, came into England along with the hop and the turkey, is, in common with its cousins the gold and silver fish, and all the tribe of cypriada, originally from the Flowery Land. Nor has any country ever possessed such vast reservoirs of fish as those which from time immemorial have existed in creeks and backwaters of the Yellow River, or ornamental lakes so large and well stored as those which surround the rural palaces of mandarin and merchant.

The rapid conversion to Christianity of the immense population of the Roman Empire, stretching, as it did, from the Irish Sea to the Persian frontier, and the

numerous and severe fasts enjoined by the Church, rendered fish an indispensable article of diet. The rivers yielded but a precarious and scanty supply, while of sea-fish, save in cities so exceptionally situated as were London and Constantinople, we hear but little. Every convent, therefore, had its stewponds, wherein eels and bream and roach might remain until wanted for the refectory table; and no mansion was without its broad moat or broader mere, swarming with pike.

The pike, indeed, appears to have been the species of fresh-water fish which, at least in Western Europe, was in medieval times the most appreciated. He was, indeed, and even when at his biggest and best, a bony and flavourless fish, which it required sauces and stuffing to render palatable; but he often grew to considerable dimensions, and figured at feasts as well as on fast days. Salmon was, like skate, brill, and rock-cod along the seaboard, absurdly cheap beside a salmon river, where its abundance was a matter for endless wrangling between thrifty masters and their servants and 'prentices, and practically unattainable elsewhere. There must be scores of fairsized towns in England, where, eighty years ago, a sole or a turbot would have been as much a rarity as a sturgeon or a porpoise. The temptation to break through the rules which enjoined, for instance, the long Lenten fast, often grew to be almost irresistible in the case of both clergy and laity. It must be remembered that many articles of food which appear to us as commonplace and necessary, were quite beyond the reach of those who lived in the middle ages. They had, in winter, little butter, and no sugar, save on high-holiday occasions. Their bread. was of the coarsest, and their meat inferior in quality; while shell-fish, vegetables, and fruit, were scarce and dear. A few red-finned roach from the pond of the monastery, or a lean pike snared in a creek, made but a sorry dinner for the hungry.

The Reformation produced a curious gastronomic reaction in those countries where the religious strife had been hottest. Fish, for a time, seemed to become unpopular. Ponds were filled up or neglected; to be an ichthyophagist was to incur the suspicion of belonging to the losing side in polemics. The chroniclers of old banquets-say those at which Edward the Third sat majestic, the new

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Garter round his royal leg, or those at which Richard the Second showed his amber-scented ringlets - dwelt lovingly upon the presence of certain sorts of fish. There was the still so-called royal esturgeon, the heavy turbot, the Jean Doré, with his gilded scales and spread of side fin, and the much-vaunted whale, probably a small cetacean of the bottle-nosed variety that had been unlucky enough to come within reach of an English harpoon. But after the middle of the sixteenth century, we seldom find fish mentioned otherwise than with a sneer. Our hardy Cornish and Devon mariners were busy then, as they are now, in catching pilchards to be cured by the thousand hogsheads for the eating of the Spanish enemy; and the same might be said of Spain's other foes, the tough Dutch boatmen who supplied Castile and Andalusia with salted stock fish. But though mackerel and herrings were hawked about the home counties at certain seasons, and immemorial Billingsgate purveyed for the needs of London, fish fell into ill repute even with the half-fed population of rustic England.

Thriftier races than ours first addressed themselves to solve the problem of adding to the national bill of fare, by the systematic cultivation of what may be not inaptly termed tame fish-of fish that should be no longer, like the hare and partridge, feræ naturæ, but as completely under the owner's control as fowls in a henyard, or rabbits in a hutch. In Eastern France, and still more in Thuringia and Saxony, the growing of fish has, for many years before the commencement of really scientific fish culture at Huningen, been practised on an extended scale.

The great merit of fish is, that the finny tribes feed themselves. The huge salmon that lies amidst lumps of ice on the marble slab of a West-End fishmonger, is worth as much as a calf, yet he has fattened himself without costing a sixpence of outlay to the Scotch duke who took the trouble to send him to market, and whose rent-roll has been nearly doubled by the harvest of the waters. We cannot all be proprietors of salmon rivers, but a series of fishponds is within the reach of all who own or rent a few acres of land through which the merest brooklet trickles.

A word, in the first place, as to the value of the projected crop. Here the statistics of the Halles of Paris prove that the supply of fresh-water fish has, since

the Revolution, greatly declined. The poor Paris of 1789 consumed fifty per cent. more of such fish than the rich Paris of to-day. The average weight of lake and river produce thus consumed is four hundred tons. Its value, pound for pound, is exactly double that of sea fish, and the demand very much exceeds the supply. In London the principal dealers have been consistently of opinion that, were there but an adequate supply, the sale of freshwater fish, now miserably small, might be decupled.

The chain of fishponds should consist of three, the upper pond being smallest, the middle one half as large again, and the lowest in level of twice the size of the highest pool. If possible, a stream should furnish a graduated supply of water, but otherwise shallow channels should be cut to carry rainwater to the ponds, which are themselves connected by trenches, each with its sluice, to be closed or open at will. The banks should slope gently towards a central deep of not less than five, or more than eight feet. Not a tree or shrub should be permitted to grow within several yards of the brink, as shade is prejudicial both to the spawn and young fry; but broad-leaved aquatic plants are a real blessing to the fish farmer.

The above arrangements are dictated, not by fancy, but by experience, the experience of hard-handed, hard-headed peasant farmers of North Germany, about as unimaginative and practical a race of men as ever solved the great problem how to grow rich by patient industry. It would be unprofitable to establish fishponds in stiff, cold, tenacious clay, which is far better left to its natural destination as a wheatfield. A light friable sand or loam suits fish, which would starve but for the worms and larvæ which abound in porous soil.

Well-chosen water-weeds do their duty, not merely in sheltering, but in nourishing, the scaly shoal beneath their tough stems and spreading leaves; but fully threefourths of the nutriment necessary for all fish, whether of the salt or the fresh-water varieties, is derived from the destruction of animal life.

The true pond-fish, the Dorking, so to speak, of the aquatic poultry-yard, is unquestionably the gold-scaled carp, of all fresh-water fish the most prolific. Its lazy, stay-at-home habits combine to make it patient of contracted limits; and whereas trout kept in wells and small cisterns are

well known to live for many years without increasing in weight by a single ounce, the accommodating carp has been known to thrive for months in Holland when hung up in a net, frequently moistened, in a cool cellar, and heedfully fed with barley meal and milk before being replaced in a tub filled with water. The carp is of all his species the tamest; will come to be fed at the ringing of a bell; will eat bread from the fingers that offer it gently by the edge of his sedgy pool; and co-operates in our efforts to fatten him in a manner worthy of even the pig.

It is not, however, expedient that the carp should be turned out alone in a pond. We must give him his doctor, and his taxgatherer; or, in other words, we must send to keep him company the medicinal tench, and, strange to say, the voracious pike. This latter is required to keep within limits what would else be a too-redundant carp-population; and the toll he levies is amply repaid by the better health and quicker growth of the survivors.

The common carp is inferior to the spiegel carp, or carpe à miroir, which owes its sobriquet of "looking-glass " to the glitter of its burnished scales, and of which any quantity can be obtained from Hamburg. The amount of little storefish to be sown, so to speak, in a pond three acres in extent, may be reckoned as six hundred carp, sixty tench, and sixty Lilliputian pike, each fish weighing from one to two ounces, so that the whole contingent would scarcely turn the scale at eighty pounds. In three years-for the owner should grant this amount of grace

the average result would be sufficiently remunerative. Seine and scoop and spoonnet would be filled, again and again, with golden-armoured carp, vermilion-tinted tench, and silvery pike; the entire yield being a ton and a quarter of fish, or two thousand eight hundred pounds weight of carp, tench, and pike, in return for the eighty pounds put in. This produce, at the Paris market price, would sell for two hundred and twenty-four English sovereigns-a tolerable interest for the capital invested.

It is well to keep, for breeding, a few of those gigantic old carp whose life is, like that of the raven and the parrot, sometimes prolonged for almost a century. These patriarchs of the pond are by far more prolific than younger fish, although their flesh, which gradually becomes as tough as leather itself, cannot be eaten.

But at five years of age a carp, like fouryear-old mountain mutton, is at its best as to flavour and profit, and with every successive year he increases in weight but slowly. Five years, in a well-selected pond, should bring a "mirror" carp to some eleven pounds in weight, but only if food be plentiful, and over-crowding prevented by the ministry of the pike. His value would then be of at least fifteen shillings, but it would be difficult to calculate the pecuniary worth, as curiosities, of two enormous carp, captured, thirty years ago, in a Saxon pond, and which weighed respectively fifty-five and fiftynine pounds English.

One word as to the reason for preferring a series of ponds. It is, on account of the advantage of stocking them separately, replenishing each pond with store-fish after drawing. And the pieces of water are of unequal extent because some truants of an elder generation always escape from the higher pools to the lower, and the presence of large fish among the younger ones is injurious to the latter, unless ample range-which for the self-supporting fish means abundant nourishment-be provided.

GRIFFITH'S DOUBLE.

BY MRS. CASHEL HOEY,
AUTHOR OF "A HOUSE OF CARDS," &c. &c.

BOOK IV. AUDREY'S NARRATIVE. CHAPTER IV.

NEWS; AND NO NEWS.

"AMONG the things which have changed since I was young, is the external appearance of banks. I have heard much reprobation among elderly shareholders and tranquil - living individuals who inhabit country places, of the splendour and the magnitude, the luxury and the cost of the great London business houses of the present time, and caustic calculations of the amount of dust, which has no connection with gold, thrown into the eyes of the public by the liveried officials, the big swinging glass doors, the marble columns, the decorated walls, the grand staircases, the parade of private rooms, and the general application of prettiness to business which are features of the modern joint-stock financial palaces.

"I am in favour of brightening up the aspect of every place in which men have to pass many laborious hours on every week-day of their lives, especially when their occupation is of a depressing nature, as I humbly conceive the stowing away

and the counting of other people's money, the reckoning up and recording of other people's profits, must be. Without being morbidly cynical, or hard on human nature, I think we may assume that there are grim features in the lives of bankers' clerks, and be glad when they have pleasant places to go through their monotonous grind in.

"Kindersley and Conybeare's was not an unpleasant place, though it was only an unpretending county-town bank, with merely a local reputation to maintain. If you had seen Kindersley and Conybeare's as it was in Griffith's early days there, you would hardly have believed it to be a bank, one of the highest respectability also, and doing a business which many of your fine palaces of finance with their marbles, and gilding, their numerous staff, and their electrical apparatus might envy, though they would affect to despise. The oldfashioned bank enjoyed the confidence of the county, and, was regarded as incomparably safer than the rival establishment 'of England' by numbers of substantial farmers, who turned up on market-days, in top-coats which might have emulated the British flag in endurance, to deposit in its keeping the contents of fat leather pocketbooks, tied round with many coils of whipcord, or those of stout little canvas bags, like miniature corn sacks. The business transacted by Kindersley and Conybeare enjoyed an enviable tradition of undisturbed solidity, and had ramifications which I do not even now pretend to understand.

"The house was a substantial building of red brick, with white stone edges, parapet, and window-frames. The door, which was of solid mahogany, divided in the middle, and had a grotesque bronze knocker grinning in the centre of each panel. The house spread widely on either side of this highly-respectable portal, and the only business symbol about it was the word 'Bank' painted in letters of sober yellow upon the brown wire blinds, which obscured the lower panes of the windows on the ground-floor. A tall arch of ornate ironwork sprang from the base of the iron railings on either side of the spotless granite steps, and supported a large lamp, which, in the time before gas, had been a public benefit to the street. Kindersley's was in a convenient situation, but the street was a quiet one, and there was not much show of people, in comparison with the business done by the bank, except on market-days. The substantial old house was roomy and

"Mr. Cony beare had assented heartily to Mr. Kindersley's wishes with regard to Griffith, and my brother found him a very kind friend. He was not a person likely to win golden opinions from young girls on any grounds, and I do not think I ever knew Madeleine Kindersley to be perfectly unreasonable about anything except her prejudice against Mr. Conybeare. He was over forty, and, of course, seemed dreadfully old to Madeleine and me; but we ought to have recognised that as his misfortune. I said so, once, in an access of candour, but was met by Madeleine with the smart rejoinder that his half-wig and his shoes were his fault at all events. Mr. Conybeare had no relatives that any of us had ever heard of, and he lived a quiet, even lonely life in the handsomely-furnished rooms over the bank offices. There was a general belief, which had been imparted to me by Miss Minnie Kellett, that Mr. Conybeare was the only person who had ever managed' the late Mrs. Kindersley, and also that Mr. Kindersley would have done wisely in taking his partner's advice in matters concerning his son; but these considerations did not influence Madeleine and me. When her father was more than usually out of spirits about Clement, we opined that Mr. Conybeare had been making him wretched.

"I know it's wrong to dislike him, Audrey,' Madeleine had admitted to me, 'but I cannot help it; he is so even and so measured in his ways-always right and never fussy, and yet so particular. Of course I know he's very clever, and all that, but he is so very hard and methodical, and such an intense old bachelor."

"Oh, don't you? I do,' said Madeleine, with pettish emphasis. I think nothing of love unless it is very poetical; and I could not believe in it unless a man would sacrifice his prejudices, and his selflove, and his notions of self-importance, and independence' Madeleine stopped abruptly, laughed, and said: 'What nonsense I am talking! Neither you nor I know anything about it, thank goodness! There's plenty of time for us to enjoy our lives before that comes.'

"People are generally supposed to enjoy their lives more after it comes, are they not? And I would rather a man had not prejudices, and self-love, and all that, than that he had to get over them for me.'

"Would you? Well, perhaps so. Mr. Conybeare will never get over anything for anybody, that's certain.'

"Of course, Griffith liked Mr. Conybeare, who liked him, and had made the unaccustomed work of his post at the bank easy to him from the first by his painstaking teaching; but we were not influenced by this. Griffith had a natural liking for fogies.

"I remembered how Madeleine and I had talked in this way, as I sat working that evening, while my father and Mr. Lester played at chess. If anything were wrong-and I had only a misgiving, not a reason for thinking so-Mr. Conybeare and Griffith had been talking it over, no doubt. I should tell Madeleine, in my next letter, the little incident of the stranger whom I had seen at Mrs. Kellett's. Anything else? What had recalled that trivial conversation? No; I would not tell her, I would not tell anyone that. I wondered why Mr. Lester felt so very sure about Lord Barr and Madeleine. Was it because he was so clear-sighted and quick in observation generally, or had he regarded Madeleine with a peculiar interest which made him especially discerning in her case. There had been a time when this suggestion would have been painful to me for some reason into which I should not have curiously inquired. It was not so now.

"Nothing came, at the time, of the slight incidents which I have set down in this portion of my story. The spring advanced, and everything was as usual at the Dingle House, and at Kindersley and Conybeare's Bank. Mr. Kindersley re