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FISHES.
27

might prove extremely dangerous to it. Yet it gradually approached the hook, took it delicately up, and the next instant dropped it over the edge of the bed.”[1]

Some other examples of parental care and fore-sight have been lately brought under the attention of naturalists, which will be noticed in the following pages. The subject is one of great interest, and would probably repay careful observation with many facts hitherto unsuspected in this extensive but comparatively little-known Class of Vertebrate animals.

Mr. Jesse, in his “Gleanings,” has given the following Table, showing the different degrees of fecundity in different species of Fishes.

Name of Fish. Weight of
Fish.
Weight of
Spawn.
Number of
Eggs.

Carp
ozs. drs.
25.. 5

grs.

2,571

205,109
Cod 12,540 3,686,760
Flounder 24.. 4 2,200 1,357,400
Herring 5.. 10 480 36,960
Mackerel 18.. 0 1,2231/2 546,681
Perch 8.. 9 7651/2 28,323
Pike 56.. 4 5,1001/2 49,304
Roach 10.. 61/2 361 81,586
Smelt 2.. 0 1491/2 38,278
Sole 14.. 8 5421/2 100,362
Tench 40.. 0 383,252

Fishes are capable of feeling attachment for each other. The pleasing writer just cited, “once caught a female Pike during the spawning season, and nothing could drive the male away from the spot at which the female had disappeared, whom

  1. Orn. Biog. iii. 50.