384 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



SPAWNING TIMES OF COARSE FISH. 



Nature of places they choose, and time it requires the young to 

 hatch out. 



The Pike spawns in February and March ; the eggs, which 

 are small, hatch in from fourteen to twenty- one days, and are 

 deposited on mud, rushes, sedges, and other water plants in 

 shallow quiet bays and ditches. As in the case of perch, the 

 female fish are usually more numerous and larger than the 

 males. 



The Perch spawns from March to May ; the eggs, which 

 hang together in bands like rows of beads on a coral necklace, 

 are very small at first, but gradually swell, and the young fish 

 escape in from ten to twenty days according to the tempera- 

 ture of the water. The eggs are deposited on water plants and 

 submerged boughs, and are then fertilised by the milt of the 

 male fish. 



The Loach spawns from May to July ; the eggs, which are 

 deposited on gravel in running water, hatch out in about eight 

 days. 1 



The Carp spawns in May and June ; the eggs are deposited 

 on water plants, and hatched out in from fourteen to twenty 

 days. There are three kinds of carp : the common carp (of 

 which ichthyologists find three distinct species in England), 

 covered with large scales ; the mirror carp, which has one 

 row of very large scales along the back, and another along the 

 side, the rest of its body being covered with a leather-like skin 

 free from scales ; and the leather carp in which scales are 

 entirely absent. Specimens of the two last-named fish, which 

 are not common in England, can be seen in the aquarium ot 

 the National Fish Culture Association at South Kensington. 



The food of the carp consists chiefly of the larva: of water 

 insects, worms, sprouts of water plants, and decaying vegetable 



1 One German writer states tli.it tlic eggs are deposited on water plants, 

 ami on tlat thallovvs. 



