SALMON EGGS, 13 
tinently sweep them away, as they make their nests on 
the very ground already selected by their predecessors 
as an eligible breeding site. 
Then water-fowl, insects, and water-rats work great havoc 
among the eggs. Accidents of nature again—such as a 
deposit of mud or a heavy flood washing away the spawn- 
ing bed and its contents; or a drought, dwindling the 
stream and leaving the eggs exposed to the air; or a 
severe frost, binding water and river-bed into one solid 
mass—are fatal to enormous quantities of ova, of which, 
SALMON EGGS. 
Fig. it. 
SALMON EGGS, SHOWING SALMON, JUST HATCHED, 
EYES. (LIFE SIZE.) 
at a liberal computation, not half the quantity produced 
ever develop into young fish. 
The “hatching” of the young fry takes place accord- 
ing to the temperature of the water, in from 50 to 130 
days. The egg, on being first extruded from the mother, 
is a small transparent globule, looking somewhat like a pel- 
lucid bead of red coral (/zg. 1), but elastic to the touch, 
consisting of a somewhat hard pellicle, containing an 
oleaginous liquid. At one point in the thin horn-like shell 
of the egg is—as is the case with the eggs of all oviparous 
fish—a tiny orifice, called the micropyle, through which a 
minute portion of the “milt” or soft roe of the male fish 
