CHAP, i.] THE FECUNDITY OF FISH. 5 



(lowed this class of animals with an enormous power of repro- 

 duction. Fish yield their eggs by tens of thousands or mil- 

 lions, according to the danger that has to be incurred in the 

 progress of their growth. 



All fish are enormously fecund ; indeed there is nothing 

 in the animal world that can in this respect be compared to 

 them, except perhaps a queen bee, which has fifty or sixty 

 thousand young each season ; or the white ant, which produces 

 eggs at the rate of fifty per minute, and goes on laying for a 

 period of unknown duration ; not to speak of that terrible 

 domestic forbear which no one likes more particularly to 

 name, but which is popularly supposed to become a great-grand- 

 father in twenty-four hours. The little aphides of the garden 

 may also be noted for their vast fecundity, as may likewise the 

 common house-fly. During a year one green aphis may pro- 

 duce one hundred thousand millions of young ; and the house- 

 fly produces twenty millions of eggs in a season ! 



When I state that the cod-fish yields its eggs in millions, 

 and that a herring of six or seven ounces in weight is provided 

 with about thirty thousand ova, it will at once be seen that 

 the multiplying power of all kinds of fish is enormous ; but 

 then the drain on fish life, consequent on the habitat of these 

 animals, is immense, or at least of corresponding magnitude. 

 Although there may be thirty thousand eggs in a herring, the 

 reader must bear in mind that if these be not vivified by the 

 milt of the male fish, they just rot away in the sea, and never 

 become of any value, except perhaps as food to some minor 

 monster of the deep. Millions upon millions of the eggs that 

 are emitted by the cod or the herring never come to life at all 

 many of them from the want of the fructifying power, and 

 others from being devoured by enemies. Then, again, of those 

 eggs that are so fortunate as to be ripened, it is pretty certain, 

 I think, from minute and careful inquiry, that fully ninety 

 per cent of the young fish perish before they are six months 



