THE VELLOW PERCH. 3 
You’ll prosper, master of the camp with ease ; 
For, like the wicked, undlarmed they view 
Their fellows perish, and their path pursue.’’* 
Day tells us that in the famous Norfolk Broads the fish assemble in shoals 
according to their sizes, the smaller and larger individuals keeping to 
themselves, and repelling the intrusion of those that materially differ from 
themselves in this respect. The writer has observed a similar natural 
association in the lakes of the Hudson and Housatonic basins. In winter 
they retreat to the deepest parts of their domain. Here they adapt 
themselves to circumstances; if the temperature of the water approxi- 
mates the freezing point, they become torpid; if it remains above 38° or 
40° F., they do not suffer any inconvenience. Dr. Abbott found a large 
number of them in December and January, in a deep hole in the bed 
of a tide-water creek, about half an acre in extent and twenty feet deep; 
they were in moderately good condition, active and in high color, with 
empty stomachs, and refusing to feed, a habit by no means invariable, 
however, at this season. 
As spring advances they assume their ordinary mode of life. With the 
warming of the waters the eggs begin to swell in the ovaries, the colors 
brighten, particularly in the males, and the lower parts of the body in 
both sexes assume a ruddy hue. Spawning time varies in different locali- 
ties. It is of course largely dependent upon the temperature of the water, 
though the requisite standard of heat most probably changes with latitude. 
In New Jersey, according to Abbott, it comes in May, with the water at 
55° F., and in Sweden, by Malm’s observations, in May, also, at 50° F. In 
Virginia and Maryland Perch spawn in March and April; in France and 
Austria, from March to May; in England and Sweden, in April and May. 
When the Marsh, Marigold, or ‘‘ Cowslip,’’ Caltha palustris, blooms in the 
wet meadows, the spawning time of the Perch is near at hand. That 
Perch spawn twice in the year, is a popular belief in Europe. This idea 
must have originated in the fact, well known to students of fish, that many 
individuals retain their eggs long after the end of the normal spawning time. 
Among some Perches, twenty millimeters long, taken late in September, 
1866, in the Rhine, a French naturalist found three males prepared 
for breeding as well as a female with ovaries hardly visible. 
The proportion of males to females varies curiously with locality. Out 
of one hundred taken at Salzburg only ten were males, and Cuvier stated 
* Oppian’s Halieutics 
