Beds containing salmon-spawn are so accessible, comparatively speaking, as to render it easy to trace the development of the egg from the embryo to the complete animal. I have personally watched the egg from the date of its contact with the milt till the little salmon has burst out of its fragile prison and waddled away to the shady side of a friendly pebble, evidently anxious to hide its nakedness. I was enabled, in fact, to hatch a few salmon eggs, brought from Stormontfield last Christmas-day, by means of a very simple apparatus in a printing-office, and had therefore an opportunity of daily observation. As may be supposed, however, the transmutation of a salmon egg into a fish is a tedious process, which takes above a hundred days to accomplish. The eggs of the female under the natural system of spawning are laid in the secluded and shallow tributary of some choice stream, in a trough of gravel ploughed up by the fish with great labour, and are there left to be wooed into life by the eternal murmuring of the water. From November till March, through the storms and floods of winter, the ova lie hid among the gravel, slowly but surely quickening into life, and few persons would guess from a mere casual glance at the tributary of a great salmon stream that it held among its bubbling waters such a countless treasure of future fish. A practised person will find out a burrow of salmon eggs with great precision, and a little bit of water may contain perhaps a million of eggs waiting to be summoned into life by the mysterious workings of nature. During the first three weeks from the milting of the egg scarcely any change is discernible in its condition, except that about the end of that period it contains a brilliant spot, which gradually increases in its brilliancy, when certain threads of blood begin faintly to prefigure the anatomy of the young fish. After another day or two, the bright spot seems to assume a ring-like form, having a clear space in the centre, and the blood-threads then become more and more apparent. These blood-like tracings are ultimately seen to take an animal shape; but it would be difficult at first to say what the animal may turn out to be—whether a tadpole or a salmon. After this stage of the development is reached, two bright black specks are then seen—the eyes of the fish. We can now, from day to day, note the form as it gradually assumes a more perfect shape; we can see it change palpably almost from hour to hour. After the egg has been laved by the water for a hundred days, we can observe that the young fish is then thoroughly alive and, to use a common expression, kicking. We can see it moving and can study its anatomy, which, although as yet very rudimentary, contains all the elements of the perfect fish. Heat expedites the birth of the fish. The eggs of a minnow have been sensibly advanced towards maturity by being held on the palm of the hand. The spawn of the lobster has the advantage of being nursed on