CHAPTER XVI. 



SPAWNING. 



"I marvel how the fish live in the sea. 



"Why, as men do a land; the great ones eat up the the little ones." — 



Pericles 



A. few general words will suffice to show how much room 

 there is for interesting enquiry in connection with the 

 reproduction of fishes, and to what good use information 

 on the subject can and has been turned. Most readers 

 will be aware that in the case of salmon and trout the 

 female produces eggs without any connection with the 

 male, and when they are ripe within her, scoops out a 

 hollow in the gravel to receive them, and as she exudes 

 them the male or cock salmon, who waits upon her, ejects 

 over them a milk-like fluid called milt, which fertilizes 

 them, and in which the spermatazoa can be detected by 

 the microscope. This habit makes it comparatively easy 

 for man to capture male and female fish, express the ova 

 of the latter when ripe into a bucket of water by very 

 gentle pressure of the stomach, and then similarly cause 

 the male to emit milt, and stirring the two up together 

 to fertilize the eggs, and hatch and rear them under pro- 

 tection. It has been calculated that when exposed to the 

 ordinary vicissitudes of nature only one in a thousand 

 salmon ova ever becomes a fish fit for the table ; whereas 



