Living Silver 



Jan thought it strange. Few human mothers would take such 

 terrible risk as does the salmon. But then, it was not only for the 

 sake of her children that the fish rose in the stream. Sex, sex, sex. 

 Up river to copulate, and the eggs were probably only a very 

 minor consideration. And yet the salmon did cover them, hide 

 them. Even though she was near the end of her tether, pushed at 

 hard by the gush of fresh water, weary of the climb, half dead from 

 starvation, she still found time to protect her young. The herring 

 did not go as far as that. Indeed, there was no reason for Jan to 

 believe that the herring experienced any hardship whatsoever. 

 She was probably unconscious of the danger from predators, feel- 

 ing safe in the very shoaling concentration that attracted most of 

 them. But maybe she didn't have such good cause. After all, she 

 had to be content with one third of a mate while the salmon had 

 a monogamous husband. But, even at that, the herring was much 

 more careful a mother than the cod. 



She laid her eggs on the ground, clustering them together on 

 stones and rocks so that they might pass for breadcrumb sponges 

 or something equally indigestible. Only the feathery sea-slugs fed 

 on these gritty sub-animals and the population of sea-slugs was too 

 small to endanger so numerous a race as the herring. Provided, 

 then, that the haddock, which could not be deceived by camou- 

 flage since it hunted chemically with its barbel rather than visually 

 with its eyes, did not discover these rough nests the eggs stood a 

 fair chance of surviving until they hatched, a much better chance 

 than free-floating gadoid eggs, easy prey as they were to all the 

 billions of microscopic creatures that combed the upper waters 

 daily for food. Then, too, the eggs were bigger, so that when the 

 young herring hatched out of them they were somewhat more ad- 

 vanced than the larvae of a cod. They were not, of course, any- 

 thing other than highly vulnerable, but they were strong enough 

 to make a few slight escaping movements, enough to save them 

 from many of their smaller potential predators : and, since these 

 small predators were the most numerous, even this slight degree 

 of self-protective ability must have preserved millions of very 



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