FECUNDITY OF FISHES. 277 



The habits even of some of th6se fish with which we 

 are most familiar, and which, in a commercial point of 

 view, are the most important, have been very much 

 misunderstood and misrepresented. The annual value 

 of the whale fisheries, that are fitted out on or from 

 the British shores, is nearly nine millions of pounds 

 sterling, the nets spread out for the capture of her- 

 rings alone would cover almost two millions and a half 

 of square yards ; and yet such are the productive 

 powers of fish, that the quantity taken might be aug- 

 mented a hundred fold, and no perceptible diminution 

 of the number occasioned. It is in the sea, indeed, that 

 we have a proper view of the power of nature in mul- 

 tiplying her productions, and providing for the con- 

 tingences to which they are exposed. If a hen rears 

 more than a dozen of chickens, we think it an abundant 

 brood, and if a ewe happens to have three lambs, her 

 fecundity is published in the journals of the day ; but 

 we never hear one word about the sole, the average of 

 whose progeny at a single birth is one hundred thou- 

 sand ; or of the flounder, that brings nearly a million 

 and a half; or of the cod, with her maximum of almost 

 four millions ! and all those vast colonies come from 

 the parent egg, which is hatched in the general bosom 

 of the deep, without any care but that which they are 

 capable of taking of themselves. Every female her- 

 ring, in those countless shoals which throng round us 

 every season, that escapes the snares of man, and the 

 jaws of larger fishes, prepares little short of forty 

 thousand to increase the shoal of the future year. It 

 is true that there are many casualties and sources of 

 destruction in that element in which those abundant 



