164 



THE SEA. 



may be washed away by a flood, or the position of the bed may be altered, and the ova 

 be destroyed, perhaps for want of water. As an instance of the loss incidental to 



salmon-spawning in the 

 natural way, I may just 

 mention that a whiting 

 of about three-quarters of 

 a pound weight has been 

 taken in the Tay with three 

 hundred impregnated salmon 

 ova in its stomach ! If 

 this fish had been allowed 

 to dine and breakfast at 

 this rate during the whole 

 of the spawning season it 

 would have been difficult to 

 estimate the loss our fisheries 

 THE DOG-FISH (Actmthias vulgaris}. would have sustained by his 



voracity. No sooner do the- 



eggs ripen, and the young fish come to life, than they are exposed, in their defenceless state, 

 to be preyed upon by all the enemies already enumerated; while, as parr, they have been taken 

 out of our streams in such quantities as to be available for the purpose of pig-feeding- 

 and manure ! Some economists estimate that only one egg out of every thousand becomes- 

 a full-sized salmon. Mr. Thomas Tod Stoddart calculated that 150,000,000 of salmon ova' 



are annually deposited in the river Tay;, 

 of which only 50,000,000, or one-third,, 

 come to life and attain the parr stage; 

 that 20,000,000 of these parr become in 

 time smolts, and that their number is 

 ultimately diminished to 100,000 ; of 

 which 70,000 are caught, the other 30,000< 

 being left for breeding purposes. Sir 

 Humphry Davy calculated that if a salmon 

 produced 17,000 roe, only 800 of these- 

 would arrive at maturity. It is well,, 

 therefore, that the female fish yields 1,000 

 eggs for each pound of her weight; for 

 a lesser degree of fecundity, keeping in 

 view the enormous waste of life indicated- 



THE GLOBE-FISH (Tetrodon) AND SUN-FISH (Orthafforueus mola}. DV these figures, would long since 



especially taking into account the de- 

 structive modes of fishing that used a few years ago to be in use have resulted in 

 the extinction of this valuable fish. 



"The first person who 'took a thought about the matter' i.e., as to whether the- 



