CHAP. ni.J DANUBE SALMON. 89 



It would scarcely pay to breed the commoner fishes of the 

 lakes and rivers, as pike, carp, and perch ; the commonest fish 

 bred at Huningue is the fera, whilst the most expensive is the 

 beautiful ombre chevalier, the eggs of which cost about a penny 

 each before they are in the water as 'fish. The general cal- 

 culation, however, appertaining to the operations carried on at 

 Huningue gives twelve living fish for a penny. The/era is very 

 prolific, yielding its eggs in thousands ; it is called the herring 

 of the lakes ; and the young, when first born, are so small as 

 scarcely to be perceptible. The superintendent at Huningue 

 told me that several of them had escaped by means of the 

 canal into the Khine, where they had never before been found. 

 I inquired particularly as to the Danube salmon, but found 

 that it was very difficult to hatch, especially at first, great 

 numbers of the eggs, as many sometimes as 60 or 70 per 

 cent, being destroyed ; but now the manipulators are get- 

 ting better acquainted with the modus operandi, and it is 



" It is very small. An eighteen-pound fish will yield eighteen 

 thousand eggs. Well, one-third of these will in all probability escape 

 the fecundating principle of the milt, another third most likely will 

 never come to life the eggs will either be destroyed from natural 

 causes or be eaten up by other fish ; so that you see only six thousand, 

 or one-third of the whole eggs, will ever come to life." 



" Well, that is so far good ; but you do not protect the infant 

 fish at all, you only insure the transmission of the eggs from Hun- 

 ingue." 



" Yes ; but the eggs are more than half the battle. Out of eighteen 

 thousand salmon -ova you will, by giving protection, hatch at least 

 fifteen thousand fish ; and then these won't be sent into the water till 

 they are well able to take care of themselves, and fight the battle of life." 



" Supposing it to be as you say, and that you can rear the fish in 

 remunerative quantities, will not an extension of the piscicultural 

 system ultimately injure the breed ?" 



" I don't think it will. We have been carrying out the system in 

 France now on a lesser or greater scale for more than twenty years, and 

 I can hear of no damage being done to the fish." 



