34 Salmon Hatching. 



ought to do something move for "the great unwashed" of the 

 metropolis than merely keep out of their way. 



Trout and salmon are amongst the most productive of any fresh- 

 water fish. As a general rule they produce about one thousand eggs 

 for every pound weight, though this does not apply to a trout under 

 one pound. But to balance this enormous prodnctiveness no fish 

 have more enemies. Natural causes, floods or droughts, may injure 

 the ova. They are also the favourite food of fresh-water shrimps, 

 beetles, and other river scavengers; and they are preyed upon by 

 various kinds of water fowl, and, shame to say ! by the parent fish. 

 The young fish, if he survives the precarious hatching time, attracts 

 jack, salmo ferox, trout, and water fowl, by his shiny barred and 

 spotted sides. And the grilse and old fish when they endeavour 

 to ascend rivers in their annual spawning time are netted in the 

 tideways, netted in the pools, fly-fished for, poached, speared, 

 tickled, caught in cruives, and so generally maltreated that the 

 wonder is how any survive at all. 



The design of the salmon hatching establishments near Hampton 

 Court, at Huningue, and in various places in Scotland and else- 

 where, is to save the poor fish from at least some of these dangers. 

 1 will endeavour to describe briefly the manner in which that design 

 is carried out. A male and female fish in spawning condition are 

 netted. The female is made to deposit her eggs upon a bed or nest 

 of gravel already prepared, and the male is then caused to impreg- 

 nate them. Both fish are then returned uninjured to their river. The 

 shallow boxes which contain the ova and the gravel are placed one 

 above another like a miniature staircase, and a constant stream of 

 water is kept flowing over them from the cistern communicating 

 with the topmost box. Each is covered with a piece of board to 

 keep out the light and to check vegetation. In this snug nursery 

 the embryo river monarchs lie for some thirty-five or forty days 

 unaltered. Then two black specks are seen to appear upon the ova, 

 which are the eyes of the future fish, and a faint line can be traced 

 runnmg three-quarters round them, which at present denotes all 

 they possess in the way of body. Fourteen days from this time 

 the fish begins to break the egg. The egg does not, as used to be 

 thought, increase in bulk, but the fish does, and becomes too large 

 for his little domicile. He sometimes even finds himself too large 

 to get out of it. For in the first stage of his growth, after hatching 

 out, be is surrounded for about half his length by a kind of bag, 

 about the size of a lemon pip, but more oblong, which is called the 

 umbilical vesicle. This apparatus occasionally sticks fast in the 

 broken egg, whilst the head and tail of the young creature are out of 

 it. Sometimes too the fish, if he is very weak, cannot get out more 

 than his head; when his appearance with his great eyes sticking out 



