BREEDING PLACES, ETC. 
Although the fish do not come together to particular spots to 
spawn, all waters in which the adults live are not equally suitable 
as breeding places, for some may lack suitable conditions either 
for the development of the eggs or for the growth of the fry. We 
may say that in general the conditions are suitable, since the fry 
have been found, on the Newfoundland banks, on the outer banks 
off Nova Scotia near Sable island, along the coast of Nova Scotia, in 
the gulf of Maine, and at various places in the gulf of St. Lawrence 
(coasts of Newfoundland, Labrador, Anticosti, Gaspé, Prince 
Edward island, and Cape Breton island). In the bay of Fundy 
and in Passamaquoddy bay eggs are spawned and develop at least 
partially, but no fry have been found, so that the conditions there 
must be unsuitable, perhaps because the heavy tides prevent the 
warm water with small salt content, resulting from the inflow of 
rivers into the sea, from accumulating at the surface in the spring 
by keeping it mixed with the colder, salter water below. The stock 
of plaice in those waters must then be kept up by the older fry 
living in the deep water being carried in from the gulf of Maine by 
the deep currents and distributed over the bottom in the bay of 
Fundy and Passamaquoddy bay. 
The eggs and fry, which float or swim more or less passively in 
the water, are frequently carried by the currents many miles from 
the places where they have been spawned, so that they are dis- 
tributed far and wide. For the most part, however, the eggs, par- 
ticularly the early ones, will be found near the surface just above 
the spots where the old fish are, and if we haul a fine net through 
the water at the surface at the right season of the year at any spot 
in the sea we can easily find out whether or not there are any plaice — 
in the neighbourhood and how abundant they are. Their eggs may 
be quite readily distinguished from those of other fishes even with 
the naked eye by their comparatively large size and by the presence 
of such a large space between the egg proper and the delicate 
membrane outside. 
The older fry keep to the deep cold water and therefore when 
their time of transformation comes they reach the very bottom in 
which the old fish live and do not live in separate regions, which 
might be called nurseries, such as are to be found in the case of 
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