724 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS. 



terminate the biology of ourplauet were uot provisious made for bridg- 

 ing over these cross lines of weakness to preserve the continuity of 

 species. In the lower classes of being we find the crude expedient of a 

 fertility so enormous as to allow of the wholesale destruction of the un- 

 protected eggs or of their brood, and yet leave a remnant to spare for 

 the chances of reaching adult age. In numerous other classes a mar- 

 velous sagacity is displayed by the mother in depositing her eggs where 

 they will be least exposed to accident or voracious attack, and where 

 the progeny (that she shall never see) will meet with their appropriate 

 sustenance. In insects this peculiar instinct — so difficult of explanation 

 as " inherited experience" — is perhaps most strikingly displayed. And 

 lastly, when we ascend to the higher classes of birds and mammals we 

 find the parental sentiment developed to an untiring vigilance for the 

 protection, and provident care for the nutrition, of the new generation 

 until it is able to take up for itself the battle of life. 



As an illustration of the reckless prodigality of productiveness in 

 some of the lower families of the vertebrate branch it may be recalled 

 that a single salmon will lay five thousand eggs; a trout, fifteen thou- 

 sand eggs; a perch, a herring, or a shad, thirty thousand eggs; a 

 pike, one hundred thousand eggs; a carp, four hundred thousand 

 eggs; a mackerel five hundred thousand eggs; a flounder, one million 

 eggs; a haddock, one million and a half of eggs; a halibut, two and a 

 half millions of eggs; a pollock, four million eggs; a codfish of mediuju 

 size, five million eggs; a large-sized cod, eight million eggs, and a tur- 

 bot, nine million eggs. Such numbers are simply astounding; they 

 can not be realized. And how great the marvel Avhen we consider that 

 each of these nine million units is a potential fish, capable of develop- 

 ment into all the perfected attributes and functions of the parent form! 

 Among the lower invertebrates may be simply instanced the oyster — 

 capable of producing the incredible number of twenty or thirty million 

 eggs, and if of large size as many as forty or fifty million eggs. 



If with this amazing fertility the various kinds of fish just named 

 are not rapidly increasing, but are stationary or even decreasing in 

 numbers, how overwhelming must be their early destruction. Even 

 after allowing for the many millions of adult fish taken by man, it is 

 obvious that of many species not one in a thousand or in ten thousand 

 of eggs or of the newly hatched can survive to maturity. Professor 

 Mobius estimates that for every grown oyster upon the beds of Schles- 

 wig-Holstein more than a million have died. 



To avert, if possible, the menace of increasing scarcity of fish supply 

 the attention of Congress was directed to the subject ; the more prop- 

 erly since in our National Government resided the jurisdiction over our 

 extended sea-coasts. By a joint resolution, approved February 9, 1871, 

 the President was authorized and required to appoint a person of 

 proved scientific and practical acquaintance with the fishes of the coast 

 to be Commissioner of Fishes aud Fisheries^ with the duty to prosecute 



