494 Transactions. — Miscellaneous, 
damaging. For where there are few males, the females would naturally, 
one would expect, look for their mates near the redds. The same redds, as 
a consequence, would get ploughed up and disturbed a good many times, to 
the destruction of the ova by exposure to light, to the hungry stomachs of 
the males, and in other ways; while with too many males there would be a 
greater devouring by these of the ova, and more deaths among the same 
sex through fighting. Excessively lean and attenuated male trout caught 
sometimes in our rivers are very likely such as have contracted constitu- 
tional maladies during spawning. These may be parasites, or fever induced 
by injuries from fighting with other males. At all events the main evi- 
dences of disease are wasting away of the tissues of their bodies and a vora- 
cious appetite, while their colours remain as bright as during the spawning 
season. 
II.— Habits. 
- Of the spawning season and time of incubation of our trout I have 
already treated, showing the latter to be 78 days—the same as I found it 
prior to 1878. The number of eggs we find to be 800 to 900 for every 
pound weight of the spawner. During our stripping in August of this year 
the eggs of fish 13 lbs. to 21bs. were straw-coloured and small, while those 
of the larger females up to 16lbs. were dark pink and much larger. In 1880 
one trout yielded about 80 eggs double the size of all the other eggs she 
passed, and they hatched out just the same as the rest. The late Mr. 
Worthington informed me that the ova of trout in Queenstown Creek in 
1881 were very light straw-colour, almost white, but those from Butel’s 
Creek, ten miles off, were pink as usual. One season he found the ova in 
the former stream light straw-colour, light brown, and pink. A female of 
12 lbs. weight, which he caught while it was attempting to ascend this 
creek, was stripped by him. The eggs all went white, and became bad. 
Long after spawning I have sometimes found empty eggs in the cavity of 
the body in clusters in the same fish, and often a few single ova. But the 
most extraordinary state of a female trout which has ever come under my 
notice was that of a 61b. fish sent to me by Mr. Lowe from the Waipahi, 
on October 25th, 1882. It was in good condition, and the ceca were sur- 
rounded by plenty of fat, yet it had about three-fourths of its old ova still 
in the ovaries, while the next season’s eggs, about the size of turnip seed, 
were spread all through and around the old eggs. The latter, the old ones, 
were mostly empty and of different colours—red, yellow, and white. The 
left ovary sac was ruptured, and twenty old collapsed ova were in the abdo- 
minal cavity. The only other abnormal appearance was the excessive 
thickness and toughness of the coverings of the air-bladder and the dorsal 
artery. 
