SELECTED FOR THE MUSEUM.

ON THE DOMESTICATION OF WILD ANIMALS.

WE have lately had a proposal from a well known author, for introducing the fish of the sea into our fresh waters, as well as for domesticating them, if such a term can be used, in maritime ponds. The subject seems, nevertheless, to have attracted so little notice, or else has been met by so much neglect or opposition, that we are induced to offer some remarks on the proposal, and to subjoin some further views of our own on a parallel question.

This has been called an age of improvement, especially, and we do not mean to controvert the general opinion. Yet there is always a singular backwardness in mankind to adopt improvements; and some, in particular, seem fated for a long period to struggle against difficulties, while, with respect to a few, these difficulties have as yet proved insurmountable. It will not cost us much trouble to point out examples, but it would cost us much space to enumerate the whole: we must be content to notice a few, and the notice of even those will not be uninstructive.

The patent of Watt's invention had expired before they had sold steam engines enough to repay their expenses; and it required fourteen years more, granted by an Act of Parliament, making in the whole twenty-eight, before it had become generally adopted. Some atmospheric engines held out even longer.

Steam boats had been known for fifty years, and more, before any one could be persuaded to adopt them. They were proposed again, long after, by Lord Stanhope, in vain. There were twentytwo on the Clyde before England could be induced to build or use one; and America was navigating itself by steam for many years alsó, before we would even listen to the possibility of following its example.

It was an obstinacy on a very different subject, which so long refused to adopt one of the greatest improvements in common life that has ever been made, the unpowdered and cropped hair; as was that which, at the drawing-room, consented so long to entangle itself in an unnavigable hoop petticoat.

In our courts of law, we have been long vainly attempting to shorten proceedings and diminish fees; in brief, to introduce improvement; and it was about twenty years before Mr. M'Adam could persuade the people to pound up their pavements and cover their streets with mud.

Mr. Seppings is one of the few who has had better luck; but then, in return, Sir W. Congreve has invented twenty useful patents, and has never succeeded in establishing one. Once a month, Mrs. Bell attempts to introduce a reformed cap, by means of a La Belle Assemblée, and she does not succeed once in a year; and once a year, Messrs. Hume and Brougham attempt to introduce improvements into parliament, and never succeed at all.

Sir Henry Torrens, it is true, has reformed the manual and pla-toon exercise, reforming on the reforms of Sir David Dundas; but then, to balance it, Dr. Goodenough does not choose to reform Westminster school, and substitute gymnastics for marbles; nor Mr. Irving his oratory, although Mr. Charles Phillips has shown him so good an example.

We have all been labouring, for more years than can be named, to reform the Opera, with the assistance of Mr. Ebers, the Lord Chancellor, and the Marquis of Hertford; and the same difficulty has been found in improving the manners of Dyot-street, and the poetry of Mr. Campbell.

If gas lights and quadrilles were successful improvements, there has been no success in the attempts to improve the morality of Mr. Wellesley Long Pole, nor in introducing the two-horse Scotch plough into Kent, in place of the great lumbering machine drawn by four or six horses, and doing half the work at double the price. Among the most difficult improvements ever undertaken, was that of trying to persuade the English clergy that they received their salaries for the purpose of living in their parishes, and preaching to their people, instead of shooting partridges in Norfolk, or playing whist at Bath; and the improvement is but partial yet: quite as partial as that of obliging the scavengers to clean the streets when they are dirty, though we must admit that these are the most persuadable of the two sets of public officers.

The world says that no people are so hard to improve as those who have long fattened on college funds and college ale. Hard enough, indeed, the task has been found; but it has been found quite as difficult to persuade a negro to drive a wheelbarrow. When the wheelbarrows were purchased, they filled them, it is true, but they carried them on their heads, as they had borne the baskets before.

Not less difficult did the commissioners of public accounts find it to improve the methods of keeping them, nor the commissioners of the navy to introduce machinery into their dock yards, nor Lady Mary Wortley Montague inoculation, nor Mr. Patrick Colquhoun to improve the system of thieving: nor did Peter the Great find less difficulty in shaving his Scythians, nor my Lord Hardwicke in taming a Scotch highlander, nor the Quarterly Review in humanizing its language; an event, at last, which must be classed among the instances of forcible reform, like that of the mudlarks by the Westminster justice and Doctor of Laws.

But we might weary ourselves in this enumeration. Suffice it that improvement is reform; and that is the reason why it is so laborious an undertaking. Whatever is is best: and therefore it cannot be better. Our ancestors were wiser than ourselves, because they were older: old age is always wise, because its beard is longer than that of youth. Nothing ought to be better than it is, supposing that were possible: if it could be better, it has not been best; and we have been in the wrong, and we ought never to be in the

wrong, or never to acknowledge it-which is the same thing. Improvement is dangerous because reform is dangerous: "we know what we are, but we know not what we shall be." Improvement is dangerous, because it is like giving the reins to your horse: he may run away-heaven knows how far. The cropping of hair once led to the cropping of heads: the reform of Old Sarum might lead to that of the County of York, and somewhat more; were we to begin by curtailing the Chancellor's wig, we might proceed to curtail the six clerks, and then, process, and reply, and demurrer, and all the demurrage together, and no one knows where we might end. Reform is dangerous: we begin "indifferently," like Hamlet's players, and we end by "reforming it altogether." It is but for a rat to gnaw at the dyke, and, in time, he drowns all Holland.

That was the reason why George the Third (good man) would not reform the bishops' wigs. If the physician-doctors had been wise enough to keep to their wigs and their canes and their cloaks, we should have had no apothecaries, and the generation would have been all the better for it. The French began with the Bastile, and they ended-it is no matter how. The Suppression Society began with Sunday pies, and has ended-no matter how, also. The Chinese are a wise nation. Pekin, the eternal city, reforms nothing, and thence it is eternal. The Turk smokes his pipe, and sits lik a tailor, as he has done from Osmyn and Amurath, and therefore he stands fast. When Rome took to wearing silk, and cast off the dirty blanket, it fell. Imperial Rome fell by reforming its toga. We change our dresses once a year, or a month, and hence Europe has no permanence. Improvement and permanence never yet went hand in hand; they are opposed terms and qualities. Change nothing; and then, "Esto perpetua," like the Esquimaux. Missionaries and gunpowder, these are the modern engines of improvement, and of reform. By their works we know

them.

If improvement is a crime against politics, it is a crime too. against morality. The supreme virtue is content. "Contentus parvo," "contentment is a continued feast," so says the copy book, there is no end to the moralities on this subject. A contented spirit is better than riches. He who wants nothing approaches to the gods, says Cicero. To have no desires, is to meet no disappointments. Desire is a painful state of the soul-desire precedes improvement; and therefore it is prudent not to improve. Discontent is an odious vice: it was by discontent that Cain felland Troy; because Paris was discontented as a bachelor, and Menelaus as a widower bewitched. Discontent killed Alexanderand Cæsar-and Napoleon: and it produced Jack and Martin-and the Methodists. It makes journeymen tailors combine; and raises the price of boots. It makes young ladies elope to Gretna Green, and produces long speeches out of the bodies of Waithman and Jacks. In short, it is an odious, dangerous, destructive vice, and a "flying in the face of Providence," (so say the Caledonians, which is the

reason they never improve,) and therefore improvement is a crime, besides being expensive, troublesome, thought-engendering, contentious, avaricious-and much more.

Such are a few of the reasons why people do not, and ought not to improve; why they resist improvement, why they hate the improver, why, when improvement is proposed, every one seeks objections, and none offers aid. And yet the devil, we suppose, who seems to delight in mischief, does contrive, like Messrs. Hume and Brougham, and other lovers of mischief, to effectuate them, in some way or other, at certain times and places, in certain things, for certain purposes, and with certain effects.

We, feeling ourselves similarly moved by the devil, have similarly undertaken to improve the eating and drinking, not the drinking, the eating, of this nation: and that we may begin upon another person's bottom, and not on our own, have taken the gentleman usher of cod and turbot, to whom we set out by alluding, as a Thesis. We must therefore give a slight view of the project of this personage, before bringing forward our own scheme, leaving him responsible for the truth, which we have not the means of sifting.

He has ascertained by observation and experiment, that a great number of the fishes of the sea have no antipathy to fresh water, but that, on the contrary, they live and thrive, and even breed in it, as well as in their natural element. He has further proved by chemical evidence, that there is no reason why a sea fish should not exist in fresh water. The water itself is, like the air to land animals, the medium of respiration, as it is of motion; and it acts on their gills, which are their lungs, by means of the oxygen which it contains. Now it is found by experiment, that it is more easy to disengage this oxygen from fresh water than from salt; and, consequently, the act of respiration ought to be more easy, instead of being more difficult.

It is equally shown that fresh waters contain the same variety of ground for depositing the spawn, as the sea does; and consequently there ought to be no difficulties, as far as relates to the act of breeding. The only other requisite is food. And although some fish are thought to feed on marine vegetables, it is certain that the greater number are purely carnivorous, and that perhaps every kind, even of those which may eat some vegetable matter, does also live by feeding on other kinds.

Fish, in short, exist by eating each other; and therefore where there are various kinds, or where there is abundance, there never can be a want of food. The larger live on the smaller; and when it is known that a cod will produce six millions of young at a birth, since it lays that number of eggs, it is easy to see that among fishes, propagating in numbers, there cannot easily be a want of food. In fact, this wonderful fecundity seems to have been ordained for this special end; and we rather consider the vegetable submarine creation as offering places of shelter for those animals, than as food; as

it has never yet been decided that these plants were actually consumed by any fish.

Thus all the imaginary obstacles to the cultivating of sea fish in fresh waters, are removed by reasoning, as we shall presently show that they have been by trial. But we shall also show immediately, that fish may be fed as easily as our domestic animals; it being a part of this project to render them such.

Nor, if sea fishes are to be domesticated, would it always be necessary to have recourse to fresh waters, though there are many cases where that would at least be a great convenience. It is easy to find innumerable places on our sea shores, where enclosures might be formed for keeping and feeding them, and where we might have them under our command as much as our poultry yards, whether for the purpose of domestic consumption or sale.

This writer mentions that there are already three such ponds in Britain; yet, though these have long been successfully established, they have not been imitated, so slow are the people in adopting the most obvious improvements.

He has also shown that the same practice is common on the Greek coast of the Adriatic, at Missolonghi, and elsewhere, as it is at Bermuda: the inhabitants, in both countries, catching fish for the purpose of storing them in these enclosures, where they fatten and improve, and where they are always at hand, like domesticated animals.

He has also pointed out what appears to have been forgotten in this age of learning Latin, (not to read but to forget it,) that this practice was universal in ancient Rome, and constituted a regular branch of rural and domestic economy. And the practice of these people confirms the opinion that sea fishes would thrive in fresh waters; because, even in the earliest days of the republic, it was common with the small farmers to bring up spawn from the sea to the lakes about Rome, for the purpose of thus cultivating them. In after times, the same practice became a common luxury in the hands of the great Patricians; and he has quoted from Columella examples of the great extent and value of their fish ponds, of the prices paid for them, and of the expenses applied to feeding the fish. This species of domestication, or of rural economy, as we shall hereafter show, was extensively practised with regard to many land animals also; and it appears that we have here retrograded, instead of improving on the practices of this great and powerful people. Classical readers will find, as well among the poets as the prose writers, abundant proofs of the attention which the Romans bestowed on fish; as they did very generally on every thing that belonged to eating and drinking, as well as to fighting, conquering, and governing.

Sicily appears to have preserved this practice, as Greece has also done in the places just mentioned. For, in Sicily still, according to Captain Smyth's account, the people transport mullet and lob