few that are taken alive to the pond deposit 

 their eggs within a few days, and, after a little 

 stay, descend the Run, leap the dam, and again 

 pass out into the ocean. The eggs are placed 

 along the shallow edges of the pond, among the 

 reeds and sedges. At first they float around in 

 a thin, viscid slime, or jelly, which finally acts as 

 a glue to fasten them to the grass. Here, left 

 without parental care, the eggs hatch and the 

 fry wiggle off and begin at once to shift for 

 themselves. 



How hard they fare ! In her sacrifice of young- 

 fish, nature seems little better than a bloody 

 Aztec. I happened to be at Bay Side, a sturgeon 

 fishery on the Delaware Bay, when a sturgeon 

 was landed whose roe weighed ninety pounds. I 

 took a quarter of an ounce of these eggs, counted 

 them, and reckoned that the entire roe numbered 

 3,168,000 eggs. Yet, had these eggs been laid, 

 not more than one to a million would have de- 

 veloped to maturity. So it is with the herring. 

 Millions of their eggs are devoured by turtles, 

 frogs, pickerel, and eels. Indeed, young herring 

 are so important a food-supply for fresh-water 

 fish that the damming of streams and the indis- 

 23 [353] 



