MIMICRY. 345 



description, are constantly feeding on them from the moment of 

 their birth. The shoals of Herring in the ocean are always 

 accompanied by flocks of Gulls and other sea-birds, which are 

 continuously preying upon them, and it seems therefore no 

 exaggeration to conclude that man does not destroy one Herring 

 for every fifty destroyed by other enemies. The destructive 

 power of man therefore is insignificant when it is compared with 

 the destructive agencies which nature has created ; and nothing 

 that man has done, or is likely to do, has produced, or will 

 probably produce, any appreciable effect on the number of 

 Herring in the open sea.* In 1781 the town of Gottenburg 

 alone exported 136,649 barrels, each containing 1200 Herrings, 

 making a total of about 164,000,000 ; but so rapid was the 

 exhaustion of the fish from this keen pursuit, that in 1799 it was 

 found necessary to prohibit the exportation of them altogether.! 

 This is a conclusion somewhat opposed to the opinion of Frank 

 Buckland, as related above ; but our aim here is only to show 

 what multifarious dangers the Herring survives.]: 



The Salmon deposits nearly a thousand eggs for every pound 

 of its live weight. But nature is prolific in her waste, and a 

 whole army of her poachers have to be satisfied. " So true is 

 this, that the yearly yield of the largest Salmon-producing river 

 in the kingdom is computed at about the produce of one female 

 fish of from fifteen pounds to twenty pounds in weight. "§ Mr. 

 J. W. Willis Bund, the Chairman of the Severn Fishery Board, 

 estimates that of Salmon eggs only 10 per cent., or 100,000 per 

 million, hatch out. " Nothing Trout like better than Salmon 

 ova ; Eels regard it as a delicacy ; while Water-hens, Water- 

 Ouzels, Crows, and other birds, as soon as any part of the bed of 

 the stream is either uncovered, or has only a few inches of water 

 in it, go over it again and again, picking out the tit-bits the ova 

 are to them."|| As to the mortality at the subsequent stages, 

 estimating the number of ova hatched as 1,000,000 out of 



* ' Life of Frank Buckland,' by G. C. Bonipas, 2nd edit. pp. 313-14. 



f 'Das Leben des Meeres,' p. 182. — Of. Marsh, 'Man and Nature,' 

 p. 120, note. 



'% The excessive spermatozoa of the Herring sometimes whitens the water 

 for scores of square miles (Matthias Dunn, ' Contemp. Rev.' lxxvi. p, 200). 



§ Thomas Watson, ' Poachers and Poaching,' p. 165. 



|| ' The Life of a Severn Salmon,' p. 7. 



