26 FOOD OF FISH. 



the authority of a rather learned Buckie fishennan for stat- 

 ing that cod-fish do not grow at a greater rate than from eight 

 to twelve ounces per annum. This fisherman had seen a cod 

 that had got enclosed by some accident in a large rock pool, 

 and so had obtained for a few weeks the advantage of studying 

 its powers of digestion, which he found to be particularly slow, 

 although there was abundant food. The haddock, which is a 

 far more active fish, my informant considered grew more rapidly. 

 On asking this man about the food of fishes, he said he was 

 of opinion that they preyed extensively upon each other, but 

 that, so far as his opportunities of observation went, they did 

 not as a matter of course live upon each other's spawn; in. 

 other words, he did not think that the enormous quantities 

 of roe and milt given to fish were provided, as has been asserted 

 by one or two writers on the subject, for any other purpose 

 than keeping up the species. The spawn of searanimals is 

 extensively wasted by other means ; and fish have no doubt a 

 thousand ways of obtaining food that are unknown to man ; 

 indeed the very element in which they live is a great mass of 

 living matter, and doubtless affords by means of minute animals 

 a wonderful supply of food. Fish, too, are less dainty in their 

 eating than is generally supposed, and some kinds eat the most 

 revolting garbage with great avidity. 



It is a very common error that all fish are migratory. 

 Some fishermen, and naturalists as well, picture the haddock and 

 the herring as iDeing afflicted with perpetual motion — perpetual 

 wanderers from sea to sea and shore to shore. The migratory 

 instinct in fish, in my opinion, being very limited. They do move 

 about a little, without doubt, but not farther than from their 

 feeding-ground to their spawning-ground — from deep to shallow 

 water. Some plan of taking fish other than the present must 

 speedily be devised ; for now we only capture them — and I tak& 

 the herring as an example — over their spawning-ground, when 

 they are in the worst possible condition, their whole flesh-form- 

 ing or fattening power having been bestowed on the formation 

 of the milt and roe. I repudiate altogether this iteration of the 

 periodical wandering instincts of the finny tribes. There are great 

 fish colonies in the sea, in the same way as there are great seats of 

 population on land, and these colonies are stationary, having com- 

 paratively speaking, only a limited range of water in which to livfr 

 and die. Adventurous individuals of the fish world occasionally 

 roam far away from home, and speedily find themselves in a 



