CHAP, i.] PERIOD OF HATCHING. 13 



have been sensibly advanced towards maturity by being held 

 on the palm of the hand. The spawn of the lobster has the 

 advantage of being nursed on the tail of the animal till it is 

 just on the point of ripening into life. Salmon eggs deposited 

 early in the season, when the temperature is high, come sooner 

 to life than those spawned in mid-winter : indeed there is a 

 difference of as much as fifty days between those deposited in 

 September and those spawned in December, the one requiring 

 ninety days, the other one hundred and forty days to ripen 

 into life. Salmon have been brought to life in sixty clays at 

 Huningue ; but the quickest hatching ever accomplished at 

 the Stormontfield breeding -ponds was when the fish came to 

 life in one hundred and twenty days. 



I have endeavoured to illustrate these early stages of fish 

 life by a drawing, which shows the eggs at about their natural 

 size, as also the advance of the fish in size and shape. 



EGGS OF THE SALMON KIND JUST HATCHING. 



At the salmon-ponds of Stormontfield the eggs laid down 

 the first season were hatched in one hundred and twenty-eight 

 days, but the eggs of other fish have been known to come to 

 life a great deal sooner. The usual time for the hatching of 

 salmon eggs in our northern rivers is one hundred and thirty 

 days, or between four and five months, according to the open- 



