Summer is the usual spawning time, because at that season the water is tepified by the beams of the sun, and is therefore better adapted for quickening the eggs into life. How the eggs of fishes are impregnated is wholly unknown. All that obviously offers is, that in ponds, the sexes are often seen together among the long grass at the edge of the water; that there they seem to struggle, and are in a state of suffering, as they grow thin, lose their appetite, whilst their flesh becomes flabby, and in some, the scales grow rough and lose their lustre; on the contrary, when the time of coupling is over, their appetite returns, their natural agility is resumed, and their scales become brilliant and beautiful. The spawn continues in the state of eggs a longer or shorter period, but this is for the most part proportioned to the size of the animal. The young animal remains in the form of an egg from December until April in the salmon kind; the carp not above three weeks, and the gold fish from China is produced in a still less time. With all the advantages of minuteness and agility when excluded from the egg, there is not one, perhaps, of a thousand, that survives the dangers of its youth. Among the spinous fishes there is no trace of parental affection; they abandon their eggs to be hatched by the warmth of the season, and if they ever return to the spot where their young first received life, the parents that gave them birth, become their most formidable enemies. By the rapacity of one another although the fishes perish by millions, yet they have other destroyers. Many of the quadrupeds and a great proportion of the sea fowls, either feed on fish, are the merciless invaders of the small fry, or devour the spawn. In a savage state, numbers of the human race wander round the lakes and rivers, whence a considerable proportion of their sustenance is derived, and among those nations whom arts and agriculture have rendered less dependent on this precarious support, superstition has usurped the place of want, and given a new edge to their avidity for this species of food; but the munificent Author of nature, notwithstanding the annual consumption of fishes is constant and immense, has made a kind provision for his creatures, in which the glory of his providence is remarkable in a twofold manner. First, by giving fishes at certain fixed seasons of the year, a particular inclination to approach the land; and this always at a time when they are the fattest, and not emaciated by breeding; as the salmon in the spring, mackerel about midsummer, herrings in the autumn, cod in the winter, &c. Secondly, by the amazing fertility which he has conferred on this class of beings. The fecundity of fishes far surpasses that of any other animals; if we should be told of a being so prolific, that it would bring forth in one season as many of its kind as there are inhabitants in England, our surprise would be deeply excited, yet