26 THE NATURAL HISTORY AND HABITS 



may be too much flooded, so that the fish may be 

 forced to deposit their seed on banks that are always 

 dry in an ordinary state of the river ; therefore, that 

 part of the seed is lost ; or the rivers, by means of a 

 continued frost, may be low, and the principal spawn- 

 ing fords ice-bound from top to bottom, as often hap- 

 pens in December: in that case, of course a great 

 part of the ova must be lost ; for, although the fish 

 have the power of spawning when the seed is ripe, 

 they are entirely devoid of the power of retaining it 

 after a certain time. Or if large floods should hap- 

 pen at the latter end of the throng time of spawning, 

 particularly if it does so before the beds are fairly 

 covered up or sadden down, they are liable to suffer 

 a good deal from being carried away. In 1848, the 

 northern rivers were actually full of fish during 

 summer and harvest, no fish being caught in the 

 rivers that summer ; the first part of the spawning 

 Season was good, and the operations were very satis- 

 factory. But the awful floods that happened in Janu- 

 ary following carried off banks and beds, and swept 

 the whole seed into pools, where it was covered over 

 by the debris of the flood, and thereby lost. We have 

 now described the spawning process, and left the seed 

 covered up in the beds, so as to follow tne parent fish 

 down the river to the sea, their feeding-ground, and 

 back again to the native river, also describing their 

 progress and growth during that time. We shall 

 now return to the 



SPAWNING BEDS. 



We have already said that when the ova is de- 

 posited and impregnated by the milt, it is covered up 

 among the gravel, and left entirely uncared for by 

 the spawned fish. Whether nature has formed these 

 fish with an idea of the time their young require to 



