6 DO FISH LIVE A SEPARATE LIFE? 



and emit the engendering principle in their passage ; this the 

 females absorb as they follow, and in consequence conceive, and 

 when their ova are deposited they are then matured into fty . 

 Linnaeus backed up this idea, and asserted that there could be 

 no impregnation of the eggs of any animal out of the body. 

 It is this wonderfully exceptional principle in fish life that 

 gave rise to pisciculture— ^.e. the artificial impregnation of the 

 eggs of fish forcibly exuded and brought into contact with the 

 mUt, independent altogether of the will or instinct of the animal. 



The principle which brings male and female together at the 

 spawning period is unknown. It is supposed by some naturalists 

 that fish do not gather in shoals till they perform the grandest 

 action of their nature, and that tiU such period each animal 

 lives a separate life. If we set down the sense of smeU as the 

 power which attracts the fish sexes, we shall be nearly correct : 

 cold-blooded animals cannot have any more powerful instinct. 

 A very clever Spanish writer on pisciculture hints that the fish 

 have no amatory feeling for each other at that period, thus 

 forming a curious exception to most other animals, and that it 

 is the smell of the roe in the female which attracts the male. 



This idea — ^viz. as to the shoaling of fish at the period of 

 spawning only — has been thrown out in regard to the herring 

 by parties who do not admit even a partial migration from 

 deep to shallow water, which, however, is an idea stoutly held 

 by some writers on the herring. It is rather interesting, how- 

 ever, in connection with this phase of fish life, to note that 

 particular shoals of herrings deposit their spawn at particular 

 places, that the eggs come simultaneously to life, and that it is 

 certain that the young fish remain together for a considerable 

 period — a few months at least — after being hatched. This is 

 well known from large bodies of young herrings being caught 

 during the sprat season : these coidd not, of course, have 

 assembled to spawn ; too young, and without mUt or roe. 



This, if these fish separate, gives rise to the question At 



what period do the herrings begin their individual wander- 

 ings ? Sprats, of coittse, may have come together, at the period 

 when they are so largely captured, for the purpose of perpetu- 

 ating their kind ; but, df so, they must live long together before 

 they acquire milt or roe. And how is it that we so often find 

 young herrings in sprat shoals? Then, again, how comes it 

 that fishermen do not frequently fall in with the separate her- 

 rings during the white-fishing seasons 1 How is it that fisher- 



