OF THE SALMON. 47 



are not easily caught on account of their small size 

 and rapid motion ; notwithstanding, they may be col- 

 lected in a pail. They may then be put into proper 

 water, or can be put through a funnel into bottles, 

 and carried to any part, provided the water do not 

 freeze. The ripe eggs of a trout, after they are four or 

 five days apparently dead and gone into a kind of 

 putrefaction, so that the stench is intolerable, may yet 

 be recovered and bred into fishes. The eggs of trout 

 will not produce fishes, so long as they remain con- 

 nected with the egg stock. The natural causes why 

 it is possible for a hen to bring a live chicken into 

 the world may very easily be accounted for from ob- 

 servations I have made in the breeding of trout. 

 The natural disposition of the animalcule of the 

 sperma which enters the egg, maybe considerably in- 

 creased. I have made many experiments in which I 

 have found that two animalcules have slipped into the 

 egg, and that double fishes have been generated ; and 

 although they had two bodies, they had but one com- 

 mon stomach. How this happens, see Section 5th. 

 Of these monstrous productions, the most of them 

 were opposite to one another, and had their stomachs 

 in common between them, and yet in a strict sense 

 the stomach only : the rest of the intestines divided in 

 about three weeks separately. Some of these double 

 fishes were fixed by their sides together, when two 

 animalcules enter the egg in a direct line 90 degrees 

 from another. I have seen only one of these double 

 fishes where the backs were crossed nearest the tail 

 in a direct angle, so that this fish formed a kind of 

 cross. This happens when two animalcules enter one 

 egg, and are placed opposite each other from their 

 direct line to 90 degrees. The monsters above were 

 grown together from the head to the opening of the 

 belly, and that had in some degree a joined body, bat 



