396 
LAMPERN. 
at least was) found, has enabled the people living along the 
river to furnish the numbers of which we receive accounts. 
The Dutch have, or have had, a contract with men of 
Teddington for the regular supply of these fish, to be used 
as bait, and they are delivered alive, in which condition they 
are kept until wanted ; and the price has varied from £3 to £5, 
or even more, the thousand. M'^e learn from the Report of a 
Parliamentary Commission, that one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand were caught by one person in the course of one winter. 
In a single season one man received £400 for the numbers 
he sold; and the whole expenditure for a year has amounted 
to £4000. 
To supply such a demand this fish must he highly prolific, 
and more so than any others of this family with which we are 
acquainted; as also it must be safe from the depredations of 
devourers; although there is evidence that they are victims to 
the omnivorous appetite of rats. We learn, however, from the 
“Fisherman’s Magazine,” vol. ii, that however prolific naturally, 
from some cause, of which the increasing foulness of the Thames 
is the most probable, the jiumhers of these fish have fallen off 
greatly within a few years, with the prospect of the utter 
extinction of the fishery, to the great loss of course of the 
fishermen who depended on it for subsistence, as well as to 
those who have used it as bait. 
It is probable that fishermen who have been ■'engaged in 
supplying the demand for these fish could communicate many 
particulars of their habits yet unknown to naturalists; but 
what is generally known is for the most part confined to the 
incidents which attend the deposition of the spawn and the 
occurrences accompanying the season of breeding. Mr. Yarrell 
has remarked in the “Journal of the Proceedings of the 
Zoological Society,” that he had examined individuals of this 
species every week from March to the middle of May, and that 
to the 19th, of April more females than males were taken; but 
after this period, the females being nearly ready to deposit 
their roe, the males were most numerous in the proportion ol' 
two to one. All the females taken about the g6ih. of A])rii 
were in a state to deposit their roe; and the milt of the males, 
now become fluid, passed in a stream from the sheath behind 
the anal aperture on making slight pressure on the abdomen. 
