26 FISH CULTUEB. 



doubtless they would be if a fair share of the eggs 

 were hatched, and their contents reached maturity; 

 but throughout its life the salmon has to battle 

 with deadly foes, from the egg to the fishmonger's 

 shop — ^from the cradle to the grave it has to run 

 the gauntlet of one constant succession of remorse- 

 less enemies. 



In the river, fish, birds, insects, and vermin assail 

 the egg. Even whilst it is being dropped from the 

 parent fish, shoals of small fry, dace, trout, and 

 many other fish, lie in wait to secure and devour 

 it. Water-rats and vermin of all kinds attack it 

 after it is deposited in the gravel. Other coarse 

 fish, and particularly eels, are supposed to rout 

 up the beds, and commit the most serious devas- 

 tation.^ 



AIL kinds of aquatic birds, swans, moorhens, dab- 

 chucks, water ousels, ducks, and particularly the 

 tame duck, are, more or less, among its worst 



' I have seen the small river lamprey hard at work on trout 

 spawning bedEl ; and the process is instructive. In groups of a 

 score or so they search the beds and remove the stones. Fixing 

 its sucker on a small gravel stone, the fish wrenches it from its bed, 

 oasts the fragment aside, and burrows into the hole it has made 

 after the spawn. If the stone be too large for one to remove, 

 another will come and help him ; nay, even four or five will unite 

 their forces; and it must be a good-sized stone which can resist 

 their efforts. Of course the mischief they do is inoaloulabU. 



