Body Covering 2i 



of their eggs. Each powerful, struggling female is firmly 

 held by one man while another squeezes from her the gush- 

 ing stream of pink eggs. A third man then removes with 

 forceps half a dozen of her scales, and fastens on her back, 

 just under the dorsal fin, a wire with red and white cellu- 

 loid tags, numbered for identification. And yet in spite of 

 all this handling, the fish go out to sea, and return in perfect 

 health to the same place the following year to go through 

 the same process again. 



But it must be remembered that these fish are handled by 

 men who have had long practice. It must be remembered 

 that the scales are removed from only a very small spot, 

 which it would be easy for mucus from the surrounding skin 

 to cover. It must be remembered that, at the time that 

 scales are most commonly taken, the water temperatures 

 happen to be low, a condition in itself unfavorable to bac- 

 terial growth, as we recognize when we put our food in ice- 

 chests to preserve it. And it must be remembered also that 

 different species vary greatly in their ability to withstand 

 handling. The small "green fry," which most visitors to 

 Bermuda have seen swimming in vast schools in shallow 

 bays, have scales so loose that when one of them is gobbled 

 up by a snapper the surrounding water sparkles with tiny 

 green points of reflected light. They ^\\\ die from little more 

 than a touch. At the other extreme is the Alaska blackfish, 

 the staple diet of the Eskimos and their dogs. This fish, 

 about six inches long, has a leathery skin in which degenerate 

 scales are embedded at intervals, like polka-dots. Maltreat- 

 ment cannot shake its hold on life. In its natural haunts, 

 according to reports, it can remain frozen in solid ice for 

 weeks on end, thawing out again, as the spring approaches, 

 in active condition. But the crowning story, quoted by no 

 less respectable a source than the late David Starr Jordan, 

 narrates that one blackfish, fed to a Husky dog from a pile of 



