Chap. 74.] 
GENEEATION or FISHES. 
461 
but it is evidently the fact that individuals '^^ among them are 
attacked by maladies, from the emaciated appearance that many 
present, while at the same moment others of the same species 
are taken quite remarkable for their fatness. 
CHAP. 74. (50.) THE GENEEATIOIT OF FISHES. 
The curiosity and wonder which have been excited in man- 
kind by this subject, will not allow me any longer to defer 
giving an account of the generation of these animals. Fishes 
couple by rubbing their bellies'''^ against one another ; an ope- 
ration, however, that is performed with such extraordinary 
celerity as to escape the sight. Dolphins'''* also, and other 
animals of the cetaceous kind, couple in a similar manner, 
though the time occupied in so doing is somewhat longer. The 
female fish, at the season for coupling, follows the male, and 
strikes against its belly with its muzzle ; while the male in its 
turn, when the female is about to spawn, follows it and devours'''* 
the eggs. Eut with them, the simple act of coupling is not 
sufficient'''^ for the purposes of reproduction ; it is necessary 
for the male to pass among the eggs which the female has pro- 
duced, in order to sprinkle them with its vitalizing fluid. This 
does not, however, reach all the eggs out of so vast a multi- 
tude ; indeed, if it did, the seas and lakes would soon be filled, 
seeing that each female produces these eggs in quantities in- 
numerable.'''^ 
'''^ Cuvier says, that there are some maladies by which individuals are 
attacked; but that it is not uncommonly the case that certain species are 
attacked universally, as it were, by a sort of epidemic. There was an 
instance of this, he says, in the lake of the valley of Montmorency, where 
numbers of the fish were suddenly to be seen floating dead on the surface, 
the skin of which w^s covered with red spots, while at the same time their 
flesh had become disagreeable to the taste, and unwholesome. 
Cuvier says, that this is not the case in general; but that some, 
more especially those which are viviparous, actually do couple ; while, on 
the other hand, in most, the male does nothing else but besprinkle with the 
milt the eggs which the female has deposited, as is stated by Pliny a Httle 
further on. 
7* These belong to the cetacea ; which, as Cuvier says, are now uni- 
versally placed among the mammifera, and not among the fishes. They 
couple, he says, in the same manner as quadrupeds do in general. 
As Aristotle says, " from those that are left the fishes are produced." 
76 Aristotle, Hist! Anim. B. vi. c. 12. 
'■^ It has been calculated, Cuvier says, that a female cod, or sturgeon, 
produces in a year more than one hundred thousand eggs. 
I 
