332 DOMESTICATED TROUT. 



plained, is enormous. The young fish, so soon as they 

 emerge from their fragile shell, are devoured in countless 

 millions, not one in a thousand, perhaps, escaping the dan- 

 gers of its youth. Shoals of haddocks, for instance, find 

 their way to the deposits of herring-spawn just as the 

 eggs are bursting into life, or immediately after they have 

 vivified, so that hundreds of thousands of these infantile 

 fry and quickening ova are annually devoured. The hun- 

 gry codfish are eternally devouring the young of other 

 kinds, and their own young as well ; and all throughout the 

 depths of ocean the strong fishes are found to be preying 

 on the w^ak, and a perpetual war is being waged for daily 

 food. Reliable information, it is true, cannot easily be 

 obtained on these points, it being so difficult to observe 

 the habits of animals in the depths of the ocean ; and none 

 of our naturalists can inform us how long it is before our 

 whitefish arrive at maturity, and at what age a codfish or 

 a turbot becomes reproductive ; nor can our economists 

 do more than guess the percentage of eggs that ripen into 

 fish, or the number of these that are likely to reach our 

 tables as food. 



As has been mentioned in a previous chapter of this 

 volume, the supply of haddocks and other Gadida was 

 once so plentiful around the British coasts that a short line, 

 with perhaps a score of hooks frequently replenished with 

 bait, would be quite sufficient to capture a few thousand 

 fish. The number of hooks was gradually extended, till 

 now they are counted by the thousands, the fishermen 

 having to multiply the means of capture as the fish be- 

 come less plentiful. About forty years ago the percentage 

 of fish to each line was very considerable: eight hundred 

 hooks would take about seven hundred and fifty fish ; but 

 now, with a line studded with four thousand hooks, the 

 fishermen sometimes do not take one hundred fish. It 

 was recently stated by a correspondent of the John o' Groat ■ 



