Fish- Hatching in a Current of Water. 97 



diameter. The eggs in another lot were nine 

 to two inches, or two-ninths of an inch in 

 diameter. The number of ova deposited by a 

 female trout or salmon is about 1000 to each 

 pound weight of the fish. Different fish vary 

 greatly in the proportionate number of ova to 

 the size or weight of the fish. Mr. Frank Buck- 

 land, in his valuable work on " Fish Hatching," 

 gives the result of careful calculations of the 

 number of eggs which different kinds of fish 

 are found to contain. A jack of 4£ lbs. weight 

 had 42,840 ; a perch of Jib. 20,592 ; a roach of 

 |lb. 480,480 ; a brill of 4 lbs. 239,775 ; a turbot 

 of 8 lbs. 385,200; and a cod of 20 lbs. 4,872,000. 

 From the enormous quantity of ova produced, 

 it will be seen that if anything near these 

 numbers were to come to maturity, both rivers 

 and seas would become, as Punch's Irishman 

 said, " stiff wid 'em ; " and as we do not find 

 this redundancy of fish life, there must be an 

 enormous waste, or loss, of both ova and young 

 fish. In fact, the proportionate numbers of 

 ova to the size of the fish may be taken as an 

 indication of the risk to be run by the fish, 

 which an actuary might calculate from these 

 data. It has been estimated from close ob- 



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