14 HERRING SPAWN. [CHAT. i. 



ness or severity of the season. When at last the infant animal 

 bursts from the shell, it is a clumsy, unbalanced, tiny thing, 

 having attached to it the remains of the parental egg, which 

 hamper its movements ; but after all, the remains of its little 

 prison are exceedingly useful, as for a space of about thirty 

 days the young salmon cannot obtain other nourishment than 

 what is afforded by this umbilical bag. 



SALMON A DAY OR TWO OLD. 



We cannot, unfortunately, obtain a sight of the ripening- 

 eggs of any of our sea fish at a time when they would prove 

 useful to us. No one, so far as I know, has seen the young 

 herring burst from its shell under such advantageous circum- 

 stances as we can view the salmon ova ; but I have seen the 

 bottled-up spawn of that fish just after it had ripened into life, 

 the infant animal being remarkably like a fragment of cotton 

 thread that had fallen into the water : it moved about with 

 great agility, but required the aid of a microscope to make out 

 that it was a thing endowed with life. Who could suppose, 

 while examining those wavy floating threads, that in a few 

 months afterwards they would be grown into beautiful fish, 

 with a mechanism of bones to bind their flesh together, scales 

 to protect their body, and fins to guide them in the water ? 

 But young herring cannot be long bottled up for observation, 

 or be kept in an artificial atmosphere ; for in that condition 

 they die almost before there is time to see them live ; and 

 when in the sea there are no means of tracing them, because 

 they are speedily lost in an immensity of water. 



