PEKIOD OF HATCHING. 9 



that the young fish is then thoroughly alive, and, to use a com- 

 mon expression, kicking. We can see it moving, and can study 

 its anatomy, which, although as yet very rudimentary, contains 

 all the elements of the perfect fish. Heat expedites the birth 

 of the animal. The eggs of a minnow have been sensibly ad- 

 vanced towards maturity by being held on the palm of the hand. 

 Salmon eggs deposited early in the season, when the temperature 

 is high, come sooner to life than those spawned in mid-winter : 

 indeed a diflference of as much as fifty days has been noticed be- 

 tween those deposited in September and those spawned in De- 

 cember, the one requiring ninety, the other one hundred and 

 forty days to ripen into life. Salmon have been brought to life 

 in sixty days at Huningue ; but the quickest hatching ever ac- 

 complished at the Stormontfield breeding-ponds was when the 

 fish came to life in one hundred and twenty days. The preced- 

 ing drawing shows the eggs at about their natural size, as also 

 the growth of the fish in its early stages. 



At the salmo9-ponds of Stormontfield the eggs laid down 

 the first season were hatched in one hundred and twenty-eight 

 days. The usual time for the hatching of salmon eggs in our 

 northern rivers is one hundred and thirty days, or between four 



SALMON A DAY OR TWO OLD. 



and five months, according to the openness or severity of the 

 season. When at last the infant animal bursts from its fragile 

 prison, it is a clumsy, unbalanced, tiny thing, having attached 

 to it the remains of the parental egg, which hamper its move- 

 ments j but, after all, the remains of its little prison are exceed- 

 ingly useful, as for about thirty days the young salmon cannot 

 obtain other nourishment than what is afforded by this umbili- 

 cal bag. 



We have never yet been able to obtain a sight of the ripen- 

 ing eggs of any of our sea fish at a time when they would prove 



