SOFT-RAYED BONY FISHES 91 



numbers, and it is doubtful whether any spawn in our waters 

 to-day. In the past, however, when the rivers were less 

 polluted than they are now, Sturgeons were more common, 

 and there is a record of an 8-foot fish in the Severn near 

 Shrewsbury in 1802, and another from the Trent as high as 

 Nottingham. Even the Thames had its Sturgeons, and a 

 7-foot specimen was caught in the spring of 1832, two or three 

 miles below Kew, and in July, 1883, a large but almost 

 lifeless fish was found floating down the river, apparently 

 poisoned by sewage. To-day, however, the Sturgeon, like 

 the salmon, is quite unknown in the Thames. 



A single female fish may produce as many as 2,000,000 or 

 even 3,000,000 eggs during a single breeding season. Each 

 egg is enclosed in a sticky gelatinous envelope, so that the eggs 

 not only stick to each other, but also to the river bed, where 

 they lie in large masses. The eggs hatch after from 3 to 7 days, 

 and the larvae which emerge are less than half-an-mch in 

 length. These tiny creatures have minute teeth in their jaws, 

 but these are lost as they grow up. At the end of a month 

 they are from 4 to 5| inches long. Some of the young seem to 

 make for the sea when about a year old or even earlier, but 

 others stay for 2 or 3 years in the rivers in which they were 

 born. By the time they have grown to a length of 3 feet, 

 however, all of them are either in the sea or in the estuaries. 



Sturgeons are of considerable economic importance. The 

 flesh is somewhat firm and hard and rather coarse, but is used 

 as food in many places. Much, apparently, depends upon the 

 cooking, and it has been asserted that a good cook can turn 

 Sturgeon meat into beef, mutton, pork or poultry ! It is of 

 interest to note that on the Pacific coast of America the White 

 Sturgeon has always been esteemed as an article of food, 

 whereas the closely related Green Sturgeon is looked upon 

 with distaste, its flesh being dark and with a disagreeable taste 

 and unpleasant smell. Both the White Sturgeon and the 

 Common Sturgeon were once caught in numbers in America, 

 but the catches have steadily declined owing to over-fishing. 

 In the British Isles the Sturgeon is of little commercial impor- 

 tance, and a large fish on the fishmonger's slab is sufficiently 

 rare to be regarded as a novelty. In Great Britain it is a 

 " Royal Fish ", for by an unrepealed law of the reign of 



