PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



chance of current and wave. Sometimes fish form a 

 separate couple. The female swims up stream, stops 

 over a grass or sand bottom, the male follows, obeying 

 her gesture. Such habits have permitted people to 

 breed fish with as great a certainty as they breed mush- 

 rooms, or more so. One takes a female swelled with 

 eggs, squeezes her like an orange, then one empties a 

 male of his milt, and nature takes charge of the rest. 

 This procedure is not possible with certain species which 

 act in concert, the male tilted onto his back, his genital 

 orifice beneath that of the female, and ejaculating in time 

 with her. 



One knows that salmon swim up rivers in troops, often 

 very dense, and into the branch streams and creeks, to 

 lay their spawn in quiet, favorable nooks. Then they 

 go down stream worn out by the dams and waterfalls 

 which they have mounted by tail-swishing, and tired by 

 their genital exercises. The column is often led by a 

 female, the other females follow. Then swim the old 

 males and lastly the young males. When the leaderess 

 has found a suitable place, one of the roes stops, hollows 

 the sand with her belly, leaves a packet of eggs in the 

 hole, an old male drenches them at once, but the patri- 

 arch has been followed by young bucks who imitate 

 him and fecundate the same eggs. Thus, with these fish 

 there is a sort of school where the experienced teach the 

 newcomers the procedure of fecundation. This mixture 

 of eggs and semen from fish of all ages should be very 

 favourable to the maintenance of a specific type, if the 

 instability of milieu did not bring about the encounter 

 of elements belonging to different neighbouring varieties: 

 103 



