The necessary qualities of a pond, to make it serve well for breeding fish, are very different from those which are to make it serve for the feeding of them, insomuch that some particular ponds serve only for one of these purposes, and others for the other; and scarce ever the same pond is found to answer for them both. In general, it is much more rare to find a good breeding pond than a good feeding one.

The best indications of a good breeding pond are these; Breeding that there be a good quantity of rushes and grass about its sides, with gravelly shoals, such as horse-ponds usually have: when a pond has this property, and takes to the breeding of fish, it is amazing what a progress will be made in a little time. The spawn of fish is prodigious in quantity; and where it succeeds, one is able to produce many millions; thus, in one of these breeding ponds, two or three melters, and as many spawners, will, in a very little time, stock the whole country. When these ponds are not meant entirely for breeding, but the owner would have the fish to grow to some size in them, the method is to thin the numbers, because they would otherwise starve one another, and to put in other fish that will prey upon the young, and thin them in the quickest manner. Eels and perch are the most useful on this account; because they prey not only upon the spawn itself, but upon the young fry from the first hatching to the time they are of considerable size. Some fish are observed to breed indifferently in all kinds of waters, and that in considerable plenty; of this nature are the roach, pike and perch.