QUE ECONOMIC SEA FISHES. 399 



be found equally abundant in both. According to Mcintosh 

 Sprats spawn well up reaches in estuaries, but Cunningham 

 avers that spawning occurs in the deep water. From such data 

 it may be inferred that they have a summer and winter spawning 

 season in different areas like the Herring. Yet there are mani- 

 fest physical differences in their entire career. In the Sprat the 

 female but carries 5400 ova ; the eggs are pelagic, though in- 

 clining ground wards, and they are markedly reticulate ; incuba- 

 tion short, three to four days; a slower larval and post-larval 

 development; at the early stage mouth closed and absence of pig- 

 ment in eyes and body generally; transformation at lj- in., 

 about a year old 2 in. or 3 in., and the sexually mature stage 

 4 in. to 4 J in. long, viz. two years of age. 



The Pilchard essentially is only a south-west British form, 

 and its winter home the English Channel. They are rarely 

 caught in the gravid condition ; their ova count some 60,000. 

 They spawn far off shore. The egg is typical of those that 

 float, but unique in possessing a large egg-membrane space, a 

 segmented yolk, and an oil-globule — these three characters not 

 being united in Clupeoids or other families. Incubation takes 

 four or five days. The early larva is one-seventh of an inch 

 long, the yolk still large, the mouth closed, and pigmentation 

 sparse. At three days the mouth develops, at five days they 

 feed, are one-fifth of an inch long, and the yolk absorbed. At 

 the Sardine stage, four inches or over long, they are about one 

 year old, and they are sexually mature at two years of age, then 

 being eight or nine inches long. The Anchovy is also chiefly a 

 southern British form, and for it there is no regular fishery ; but 

 that of Holland, on the contrary, is very valuable. Cunningham 

 infers that the Dutch Anchovies retreat in October towards the 

 English Channel, the same again migrating north in the spring 

 to spawn. Their sausage-shaped egg is quite exceptional among 

 floating eggs. The Shads have the Salmon habit of running 

 right into fresh-water streams, where they spawn. They are less 

 a food product in this country than in America, where Shad 

 hatcheries are quite in vogue. 



The Pleuronectidce, or flat-fishes, nowadays holds a high 

 position in the English fish-trade. Not being used in the salted 

 condition, formerly their consumption was restricted coastwise ; 



