6 SIZE OF A SHOAL OF HERRINGS. 



old. Were only half of the eggs to come to life, and but one 

 moiety of the young fish to live, the sea would so abound 

 with animal life that it would soon be impossible for a boat 

 to move in its waters. But we can never hope to realise such 

 a sight ; and when it is considered that a single shoal of 

 herrings consists of millions and millions of individual fish, 

 and takes up a space in the sea far more than that occupied by 

 the parks of London, and yet gives no impediment to naviga- 

 tion, my readers will see the magnitude of our fish supplies ; 

 but, from the destruction of fish life by natural causes, the 

 breeding supply is kept down to an amount that cannot, in my 

 opinion, be very far from the point of extermination; and 

 hence I am prepared to argue the urgent necessity of regula- 

 tion, continued statistical inquiry, and the adoption of fish- 

 culture as an adjunct to the natural supplies. 



The figures of fish fecundity are quite reliable, and are not 

 dependent on mere guessing or imagination, because different 

 persons have taken the trouble, the writer amongst others, to 

 count the separate eggs in the roes of some of our fish, in 

 order to ascertain exactly their amount of breeding power. It 

 is well known that the female salmon yields her eggs at the 

 rate of about one thousand for each pound of her weight, and 

 some fresh-water fish are still more prolific ; the sea fish, 

 again, far excelling them in reproductive power. The sturgeon, 

 for instance, is wonderfully fecund, as much as two hundred 

 pounds weight of roe having been taken from one of these fish, 

 yielding a total of 7,000,000 of eggs. I have in my possession 

 the results of several investigations into the question of fish 

 fecundity, which were conducted with careful attention to the 

 details, and without any desire to exaggerate : these give the 

 following results : Cod-fish, 3,400,000 ; flounder, 1,250,000 ; 

 sole, 1,000,000 ; mackerel, 500,000 ; herring, 35,000 ; smelt, 

 36,000. Mr. Frank Buckland, who some time ago investigated 

 this part of the fish question, quite corroborates such numbers 



