FISH CULTURE. 297 
water, comes in contact with the eggs and impregnates 
them. In due time, nourished by the water in which 
they are deposited, and quickened by its heat, they de- 
velop and hatch into living fish. 
Now a little examination into circumstances will make 
it evident that a great waste must here occur. A multi- 
tude of greedy creatures hover around, ready to devour 
the eggs as soon as they are left by the parent, or are 
Swept within reach by the current; a portion fails to 
come in contact with the milt; others are destroyed by 
noxious sediment or parasitic fungi, or buried deep be- 
neath the shifting sands which the floods may bring down 
upon them. Should a portion of the eggs escape these 
dangers, the newly-hatched and defenceless young are 
eagerly hunted out by all the carnivorous tribes of the 
water. In the end, comparatively few of the eggs laid 
result in mature fish; it is perhaps impossible to ascertain 
e proportion with precision, but one per cent. would be 
far more than sufficient to maintain and increase the 
numbers of any species, so enormously fecund are they. 
Indeed, a rough calculation shows that were one per cent. 
of the eggs of a salmon to result in full-grown fish, and 
were they and their progeny to continue to increase in 
the same ratio, they would in about sixty years amount, 
in bulk, to many times the size of the earth. Nor is the 
salmon among the most prolific species. I have counted 
in a perch (Perca flavescens), weighing three and a half 
ounces, 9,943 eggs; and in a smelt ( Osmerus viridescens), 
ten inches in length, 25,141. Some of the larger fishes 
produce millions at each spawning. 
Now if in some way the eggs can be protected from 
these various dangers that threaten them when abandoned 
by the parent fish to the-ordinary course of nature, it will 
AMERICAN NAT., VOL. IL 38 
