The figures of fish fecundity are quite reliable, and are not dependent on mere guessing or imagination, because different persons have taken the trouble, the writer amongst others, to count the separate eggs in the roes of some of our fish, in order to ascertain exactly their amount of breeding power. It is well known that the female salmon yields her eggs at the rate of about one thousand for each pound of her weight, and some fresh-water fish are still more prolific; the sea fish, again, far excelling them in reproductive power. The sturgeon, for instance, is wonderfully fecund, as much as two hundred pounds weight of roe having been taken from one of these fish, yielding a total of 7,000,000 of eggs. I have in my possession the results of several investigations into the question of fish fecundity, which were conducted with careful attention to the details, and without any desire to exaggerate: these give the following results:—Codfish, 3,400,000; flounder, 1,250,000; sole, 1,000,000; mackerel, 500,000; herring, 35,000; smelt, 36,000. Mr. Frank Buckland, who some time ago investigated this part of the fish question, quite corroborates such numbers as being correct, having found equally great quantities in fish dissected by himself. Any of my readers who wish to manipulate these figures may try by way of experiment a few calculations with the herring. The produce of a single herring is, let us say, thirty-six thousand eggs, but we may—and the deduction is a most reasonable one—allow that half of these never come to life, which reduces the quantity born to eighteen thousand. Allowing that the young fish will be able to repeat the story of their birth in three years, we may safely calculate that the breeding stock by various accidents will by that time be reduced to nine thousand individuals; and granting half of these to be females, or let us say, for the sake of rounding the figures, that four thousand of them yield roe, we shall find by multiplying that quantity by thirty-six thousand (the number of eggs in a female herring) that we obtain a total of one hundred and forty-four millions as the produce in three years of a single pair of herrings; and although half of these might be taken as the food of man as soon as they were large enough, there would still be left an immense breeding stock even after all deductions for casualties had been given effect to; so that the devastations committed by man on the shoals while capturing for food uses must be enormous if they affect, as I suppose, the reproductiveness of these useful animals. Of course this is but guess-work, and is merely given as a basis for a more minute statement; but I have conversed with practical people who do not think that, taking all times and seasons into account, even five per cent of the roe of a herring comes to life, far less that such a percentage reaches maturity as table fish.