32 EFFECT OF SPAWNING. 



For some time both before and after spawning, 

 the parent trout are unfit for the table they 

 become black about the head and body, and their 

 flesh is soft, watery, and unwholesome. After 

 the operation, when they return to the deep still 

 water, where they pass the winter, their shape 

 and colour undergo great alterations. They be- 

 come lank and lean, their heads appear dispropor- 

 tionally large, and their bodies acquire a dusky 

 and disagreeable hue, little resembling their usual 

 bright and beautiful tints, the contemplation of 

 which induced our patriarch, the enthusiastic 

 Izaac, to exclaim with Solomon, " every thing is 

 beautiful in its season." What is worse, their skin, 

 particularly near their gills, becomes infested with 

 a parasitic insect (Lernea trutta), which is a kind 



male salmon, and causing it to come in contact with the 

 last ova deposited. He then covered them in beneath the 

 gravel, and in due time they produced fish. The ova he 

 had covered in without impregnation produced nothing. He 

 repeated the experiment frequently, and always with similar 

 results. He has even taken two female salmon in the act 

 of spawning. The ova of one he impregnated with milt 

 from a male ; the ova of the other he did not impregnate. 

 He covered in each under equal conditions, apart, in the 

 same spawning-bed. The ova that he had caused to be 

 impregnated were productive ; the other proved perfectly 

 barren. This experiment was repeated, and the result was 

 ever the same." 



