. Domesticated trout [microform] : how to breed and grow them. Fish culture; Trout; Pisciculture; Truite. plained, is enormous. The young fish, so soon as they emerge from their fragile shell, are devoured in countless millions, not one in a thousand, perhaps, escaping the dan- gers of its youth. Shoals of haddocks, for instance, find their way to the deposits of herring-spawn just as the eggs are bursting into life, or immediately after they have vivified, so that hundreds of thousands of these infantile fry and quickening ova are annually devoured. The hun- gry codfish are eternally devourin
. Domesticated trout [microform] : how to breed and grow them. Fish culture; Trout; Pisciculture; Truite. plained, is enormous. The young fish, so soon as they emerge from their fragile shell, are devoured in countless millions, not one in a thousand, perhaps, escaping the dan- gers of its youth. Shoals of haddocks, for instance, find their way to the deposits of herring-spawn just as the eggs are bursting into life, or immediately after they have vivified, so that hundreds of thousands of these infantile fry and quickening ova are annually devoured. The hun- gry codfish are eternally devouring the young of other kinds, and their own young as well; and all throughout the depths of ocean the strong fishes are found to he preying on the weak, and a perpetual war is being waged for daily food. Reliable information, it is true, cannot easily be obtained on these points, it being so difficult to observe the habits of animals in the depths of the ocean ; and none of our naturalists can inform us how long it is before our whitefish arrive at maturity, and at what age a codfish or a turbot becomes reproductive ; nor can our economists do more than guess the percentage of eggs that ripen into fish, or the number of these that are likely to reach our tables as food. As has been mentioned in a previous chapter of this volume, the supply of haddocks and other Gadidce was once so plentiful around the British coasts that a short line, with perhaps a score of hooks frequently replenished with bait, would be quite sufficient to capture a few thousand fish. The number of hooks was gradually extended, till now they are counted by the thousands, the fishermen having to multiply the means of capture as the fish be- come less plentiful. About forty years ago the percentage of fish to each line was very considerable : eight hundred hooks would take about seven hundred and fifty fish ; but now, with a line studded with four thousand hooks, the fishermen sometimes do not take one hundred f
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectfishcul, bookyear1893
