NATURE'S CALENDAR 



are to be caught now, the earhest of the 

 sea-fishes to arrive from deep water, ex- 

 cept, perhaps, the lampreys, which are 

 ascending the river to spawn among the 

 pebbles, with which they form a sort of 

 nest. Herring are thronging all along 

 the coast, 



" And alewives, with their crowded shoals, in 

 every creek do swim," 



as a quaint old poem describes it. 



Alewives are an inferior sort of shad, 

 and the earliest of the sea-fishes to ascend 

 the Atlantic rivers in any great numbers. 

 The time varies with the lateness or 

 earliness of the season and the conse- 

 quent variation in the temperature of the 

 water. Their eggs are adhesive, like 

 those of the herring, and stick to the bot- 

 tom in shoal water, or to anything they 

 may touch, from sixty thousand to one 

 hundred thousand being laid by each fe- 

 male fish at once, almost all of which are 

 devoured by countless enemies before 

 any can hatch. 



Later come the hosts of that most im- 

 portant of all our eastern anadromous 

 fishes— the shad. They appear in the St. 

 John's River, in Florida, in November, 

 and spawn in March. In the Savannah 

 River they appear in January, in Albe- 

 marle Sound a few days later, and in the 

 Chesapeake Bay in February, where, in 

 April and May, the fishing is at its height, 



