FECUNDITY OF FISH. 51 



perpetual turmoil, and scaring the fish from their usual haunts? 

 Such an hypothesis could be seriously entertained for a moment 

 only to be rejected. Could it be owing to any cyclical meteoro- 

 logical changes, or to anything anomalous in the order of the 

 seasons 1 Admitting that something of this kind has been going 

 on for some time, and is still going on, it was readily seen, never- 

 theless, that it was all too inappreciable and remote to have had 

 the result complained of to cause that in the waters of " the 

 great deep " which it had failed to effect in any noticeable way on 

 the dry land. Or, was it that the fish themselves, by reason of 

 their numberless enemies, afloat and ashore, were actually diminish- 

 ing in numbers, and so necessarily becoming scarcer from year to 

 year ? No one, however, knowing anything of the economy of the 

 fish in question, could for a moment entertain such an idea. The 

 fecundity of these fish is something incredible. We once had the 

 roe of a female cod, that weighed (the fish) six Ibs., first boiled hard, 

 and then divided with tolerable exactness into so many ounces, and 

 counting the number of eggs in one ounce, and multiplying by the 

 number of ounces in the entire roe, we found, at a rough calcula- 

 tion, that in that single fish, of no great size, there were upwards 

 of a million and a half of eggs each egg destined to become a 

 fish, and, barring accidents, to attain to the average age and size of 

 its kind. But however we may try to account for the scarcity of 

 these fish in our lochs for several years back, it is an agreeable 

 duty to have to record that during the past winter and spring there 

 has been a marked improvement alike in the quantity and quality 

 of the fish caught all along the western seaboard. Not only have 

 the common fish of our own coasts been taken in considerable 

 numbers, but several kinds of fish formerly known only as occasional 

 visitors to our shores have this season been plentiful in all our 

 lochs, and have well repaid the diligence of their captors. The 

 long-nosed skate, for example, formerly a rare fish with us, has this 



