22 SEA FISHERIES 



would be too stupendous. For these creatures, placed 

 at the bottom of the scale of vertebrate life, reproduce 

 themselves with alarming facility. The turbot spawns 

 9,000,000 eggs in a season ; the codfish, 6,000,000 ; the 

 mackerel, 700,000 ; the herring, 50,000 ; the brill, 200,000 ; 

 the red gurnard, 400,000 ; the sole, 85,000. Let us remark 

 in passing, moreover, that the females are usually far 

 more numerous than the males ; the proportions are 

 75 to 25 in the case of the herring, and 95 to 5 in the 

 case of the conger. Many eggs float on the surface of 

 the sea ; x in certain regions they are so abundant as to 

 form a kind of living emulsion. In the Skagerack, on 

 July 26, 1885, the Danish naturalist, Hensen, found 

 fecundated eggs to the number of 278,795,000,000 to the 

 square mile. During the months of February and March 

 there are in the North Sea, according to Herr Krummel, 

 some 67,000,000,000,000 eggs and larvae. If we admit 

 that the same sea gives asylum each year to some 

 15,000,000,000 individual herrings, and that of 10,000 

 eggs only one results in an adult fish, the annual pro- 

 duction of eggs would amount to 150 trillions. Fish, 



1 These are called pelagic eggs or spawn, in contradistinction to 

 the submerged eggs, which fall to the bottom of the sea. The first 

 are always very small, seldom more than one millimetre in diameter. 

 The second are larger, being five or six millimetres in diameter. 

 The eggs of the ray are enormous, and are protected by a tough 

 rectangular case, or shell, with four horns or tendrils [the object 

 which children know as one of the forms of the " mermaid's purse "]. 

 Among the pelagic eggs we must cite (floating near the bottom) 

 those of the thwaite shad ; and floating at or near the surface those 

 of flat-fish in general, of the cod, the grey and the red mullet, the 

 haddock, mackerel, horse mackerel, gurnard, sea-perch, bass, and 

 pilchard. The submerged eggs are those of the salmon, herring, and 

 tunny families. The eggs are nearly always left to their fate. The 

 sexes are separate, except in the case of some of the perches. 

 Accidental hermaphroditism is found in the sturgeon, mackerel, 

 cod, whiting, sole, and herring. 



