( iiAi-. i.j FROM THE EGG TO THE FISH. 11 



for continued examination. The roe of this fine fish is, I dare- 

 say, pretty familiar to most of my readers. The microscope 

 reveals the eggs of the salmon as being more oval than round, 

 although they appear quite round to the naked eye. A 

 yolk seems to float in the dim-looking mass, and the skin 

 or shell appears full of minute holes, while there is an appear- 

 ance of a kind of canal or funnel, which opens from the 

 outside and is apparently closed at the inner end. The milt 

 is found to swarm with a species of very small creatures 

 with big heads and long tails, apparently of very low 

 organisation. On the contact of this fluid with the egg, 

 into which it enters by the canal I have described, an im- 

 mediate change takes place the ovum, so to speak, becomes 

 illuminated as if by some curious internal power, and the 

 aspect of the egg then appears a great deal brighter and clearer 

 than before ; and it is surely wonderful that on the mere 

 touching of the egg with this wonder-working sperm so great 

 a change should take place a change which indicates that 

 the grand process of reproduction characteristic of all living 

 nature has begun in the ovum, and will go on with increasing 

 strength to maturity. 



Beds containing salmon-spawn are so accessible, compara- 

 tively speaking, as to render it easy to trace the development 

 of the egg from the embryo to the complete animal. I have 

 personally watched the egg from the date of its contact with 

 the milt till the little salmon has burst out of its fragile prison 

 and waddled away to the shady side of a friendly pebble, evi- 

 dently anxious to hide its nakedness. I was enabled, in fact, 

 to hatch a few salmon eggs, brought from Stormontfield last 

 Christmas-day, by means of a very simple apparatus in a 

 printing-office, and had therefore an opportunity of daily 

 observation. As may be supposed, however, the transmutation 

 of a salmon egg into a fish is a tedious process, which takes 

 above a hundred days to accomplish. The eggs of the female 



