4 FECUNDITY OF FISH. 



each season ; or the white ant, which produces eggs at the rate 

 of fifty per minute, and goes on laying for a period of unknown 

 duration ; not to speak of that terrible domestic bugheai which 

 no one likes to name, but which is popularly supposed to become 

 a great-grandfather in twenty-four hours ! The little aphides 

 of the garden may also be noted for their vast fecundity, as may 

 likewise the common house-fly. During a year one green aphis 

 may produce one hundred thousand millions of young ; and the 

 house-fly lays twenty millions of eggs in a season ! But al- 

 though there may be thirty thousand eggs in a herring, the 

 reader must bear in mind that if these, be not vivified by the 

 milt of the male fish, they rot in the sea, and never become of 

 food value, except perhaps to some minor monster of the deep. 

 Millions of the eggs that are emitted by the cod or the herring 

 never come to life — many of them from lack of fructifying 

 power, others being devoured by enemies. Then, again, of 

 those eggs that are ripened, it is ascertained from careful in- 

 quiry, that fully ninety per cent of the young fish perish before 

 they are six months old. Were only half the eggs to come to 

 life, and but one moiety of the young fish to live, the sea 

 would so abound with animal life that it would be impossible 

 for a boat to move in its waters. But we can never hope to 

 realise such a sight ; and when it is considered that a single 

 shoal of herrings consists of many millions of individual fish, 

 and takes up a space in the sea far more than that occupied by 

 the city of London, and yet gives no impediment to navigation, 

 my readers will see the magnitude of our fish supplies ; but, by 

 the destruction of fish life from natural causes, the breeding 

 stock is kept down to an amount that may not be far from the 

 point of extermination. 



The figures of fish fecundity are quite reliable, and are not 

 dependent on guessing, because different persons have taken the 

 trouble, the writer among others, to count the eggs in the roes 

 of some of our fish, that they might ascertain exactly their 

 amount of breeding power. It is well known that the female 

 sabnon yields eggs at the rate of about one thousand for each 

 pound weight, and some fresh-water fish are even more prolific • 

 sea fish, again, far excelling these in reproductive power. The 

 sturgeon, for instance, is wonderfully fecund, as much as two 

 hundred pounds weight of roe having been taken from one 

 fish, yielding a total of 7,000,000 of eggs. I possess the . 

 results of several investigations into fish fecundity, which were-'* 



