in natural history. See NATURAL HISTORY.

Breeding of Fishes may be turned to great advantage; for besides furnishing your table, obliging your friends, and raising money, your land will be thereby greatly improved, so as to yield more this way than by any other employment whatever.

When fish are fed in large pools or ponds, either malt boiled, or fresh grains, is the best food; thus earps may be raised and fed like capons, and tenches will feed as well. The care of feeding them is best committed to a gardener or the butler, who should be always at hand. In a few, any sort of grain boiled, especially peas, and malt coarse ground; also the grains after brewing, while fresh and sweet: but one bushel of malt not brewed, will go as far as of grains. See FISH-POND, infra.

a ship, a plank or piece of timber, fastened to a ship's mast or yard, to strengthen it, which is done by nailing it on with iron spikes, and winding or winding ropes hard about them.

Fishes, in heraldry, are the emblems of silence and watchfulness; and are borne either upright, imbowed, extended, endorsed respecting each other, surmounting one another, fretted, &c.

In blazoning fishes, those borne feeding, should be termed devouring; all fishes borne upright and having fins, should be blazoned hauring; and those borne transverse the escutcheon, must be termed naissant.

FISH-PONDS, those made for the breeding or feeding of fish.

Fish-ponds are no small improvement of watery and boggy lands, many of which are fit for no other use. In making of a pond, its head should be at the lowest part of the ground, that the trench of the flood-gate or sluice, having a good fall, may not be too long in emptying. The best way of making the head secure, is to drive in two or three rows of stakes above six feet long, at about four feet distance from each other, the whole length of the pond-head, whereof the first row should be rammed at least about four feet deep. If the bottom is false, the foundation may be laid with quicklime; which flaking, will make it as hard as a stone. Some lay a layer of lime, and another of earth dug out of the pond, among the piles and strakes; and when these are well covered, drive in others as they see occasion, ramming in the earth as before, till the pond-head be of the height designed.

The dam should be made sloping on each side, leaving a water to carry off the over-abundance of water in times of floods or rains; and as to the depth of the pond, the deepest part need not exceed six feet, rising gradually in tholes towards the sides, for the fish to run themselves, and lay their spawn. Gravelly and sandy bottoms, especially the latter, are best for breeding; and a flat soil with a white fat water, as the washings of hills, commons, streets, sinks, &c., is best for fattening all sorts of fish. For storing a pond, carp is to be preferred for its goodness, quick growth, and great increase, as breeding five or six times a-year. A pond of an acre, if it be a feeding and not breeding one, will every year feed two hundred carps of three years old, three hundred of two years old, and four hundred of a year old. Carps delight in ponds that have marl or clay bottoms, with plenty of weeds and grass, whereon they feed in hot months.

Your pond should be drained every three or four years, and your fish sorted. If it is a breeding one, the smaller ones are to be taken out, to store other ponds with; leaving a good stock of females, at least eight or nine years old, as they never breed before that age. In feeding ponds, it is best to keep them pretty near of a size.