NATURAL FOOD 27 



ail sorts, it may be interesting to mention a few of the 

 circumstances respecting it, as ascertained by obser- 

 vation. 



Great Fecundity of Fishes. 



Like birds, reptiles, and insects, fish are produced 

 from eggs, the mass of which found in the mother- 

 fish is well known under the name of roe, and, after 

 exclusion, by the name of spawn. The number of 

 eggs in the roe of some fishes is so prodigious as to 

 appear almost incredible. In the carp, Professor 

 Blumenbach says there are more than 200,000 ; but 

 M. Petit in a carp eighteen inches long found no 

 fewer than 342,144, and in a sturgeon weighing a 

 hundred and sixty pounds there was the astonishing 

 number of 1,467,500 ; yet even this is nothing to the 

 fecundity of the cod, in which upwards of nine mil- 

 lions of eggs have been reckoned by the celebrated 

 Dutch naturalist, Leeuwenhoeck. 



The method taken by Mr. Harmer.for counting the 

 eggs, was to weigh with accuracy the whole mass of 

 roe, then taking a piece of the weight of twenty, thirty, 

 or forty grains, as was most convenient, weighing it 

 accurately, and giving the turn of the scale to the eggs, 

 to tell them very carefully over, and then, by dividing 

 the number of eggs by the grains, to find how many 

 eggs there were in each grain, or nearly so. He only 

 reckoned those eggs that could be distinguished by the 

 naked eye; although by such limitation numbers 

 were passed over, that, by the help of an eye-glass, 

 might have been justly counted. They were told on a 



