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 m^.y 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 offish \\ lbs. to 2 lbs. were straw-coloured and small, while those 

 of the larger females up to 161bs. were dark pink and much larger. In 1880 

 one trout yielded about 30 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 ca3ca were sur- 

 rounded by plenty of fat, yet it had about three-fourths of its old ova still 

 hi 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. 



