THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW FISH INTO EUROPE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5424, 15 August 1878, Page 3

THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW FISH INTO EUROPE.

(From the London Standard.) If our salmon are in such a bad way as Frank Bnckiand and other authorities on tho subject believe, if a contagious disease has broken out amongst them of which the nature cannot well be understood, and for which there is apparently no cure, the proposal made by M. Darby de Thiersant, a French diplomatist, to import in large quantities a valuable Chinese fish called the “ setz” ought to be received with attention. M. de Thiersant has already introduced into France a largo number of Chinese plants and animals ; and his acquaintance with the setz is not merely that of an epicure, such as we all possess in a more or less intimate degree, with the salmon, but also and above all that of an intelligent student of fish iu their natural state. That the setz is a desirable fish, considered as an article of diet, may be accepted as a proposition surely worth discussing. On such a point the opinion of any diplomatist may be taken. Indeed, if we except some of the larger aud coarser species —such as the conger eel, the shark, and the whale—no fish that swims in the sea is unfit for the food of man ; whilst of river fish every known variety, though possibly tasteless, may yofc be pronounced edible. Let us take it for granted, then, that the setz, so strongly recommended by M. Darby de Thiersant, is a very good fish for table purposes. It belongs to the carp family, and when fed on sea plants in ponds is said to attain with great rapidity a weight of about forty pounds, which, at one shilling a pound, would make each setz worth on the fisherman’s slab a couplo of sovereigns. Thus the new Chinese fish is one in which the trade‘as well as mere naturalists may bo expected to take an interest ; aud if epicures, fishmongers, and the ichthyologists would work together with that view, the introduction and acclimatisation of the setz in English waters might easily be effected. Duifing the last few years experiments have bean made with the setz in the Jardin d’Acclimatafcion of Paris, from which it had been ascertained that it will thrive in a European climato ; that it breeds rapidly; and that, with a little judicious encouragement, it may be made to increase and multiply.