102 A BOOK OF THE RUNNING BROOK: 



vanish immediately after, the fish have spawned. 

 These are generally supposed to be meant as a 

 protection to the head of the fish during 

 spawning, when they jam their heads in between 

 two pebbles, while their tails stand up almost 

 perpendicularly. In the Report of the Imperial 

 Society of Acclimatization in 1867 there is a 

 most interesting paper by M. Saubadon on the 

 minnow, which he bred in great quantities as 

 food for trout and young salmon. Besides 

 breeding them artificially, M. Saubadon used 

 also to search the spawning-beds of the minnows 

 (which he remarked were always on the same 

 piece of ground) and collect the eggs, which are 

 very small, and are to be found adhering one to 

 the other, in the interstices of the stones. 

 Sometimes he found masses of eggs two inches 

 in width and eight inches in length, and on one 

 occasion he collected more than six pounds* 

 weight of minnows' eggs. De minimis non curat 

 lex, so we suppose there is no law against 

 robbing the nest of a minnow. 



Amongst minnows the average of the sexes is 

 two males to one female. Besides feeding on 



