There are points of contrast between the salmon and the herring which I cannot pass without notice. They form the St. Giles’ and St. James’ of the fish world, the one being a portion of the rich man’s food, and the other filling the poor man’s dish. The salmon is hedged round by protecting Acts of Parliament, but the herring gets leave to grow just as it swims, parliamentary statutes being thought unnecessary for its protection. The salmon is born in its fine nursery, and is wakened into life by the music of beautiful streams: it has nurses and night-watchers, who hover over its cradle and guide its infant ways; but the herring, like the brat of some wandering pauper, is dropped in the great ocean workhouse, and cradled amid the hoarse roar of the ravening waters; and whether it lives or dies is a matter of no moment, and no one’s business. Herring mortality in its infantile stages is appalling, and even in its old age, at a time when the rich man’s fish is protected from the greed of its enemies, the herring is doomed to suffer the most. And then, to finish up with the same appropriateness as they have lived, the venison of the waters is daintily laid out on a slab of marble, while the vulgar but beautiful herring is handled by a dirty costermonger, who hurls it about in a filthy cart drawn by a wretched donkey. At the hour of reproduction the salmon is guarded with jealous care from the hand of man, whilst at the same season the herring is offered up a wholesale sacrifice to the destroyer. It is only at its period of spawning that the herring is fished. How comes it to pass that what is a highly punishable crime in the one instance is a government-rewarded merit in the other? To kill a gravid salmon is as nearly as possible felony; but to kill a herring as it rests on the spawning-bed is an act at once meritorious and profitable! Having given my readers a general idea of the fecundity of fish, and the method of fructifying the eggs, and of the development of these into fish—for, of course, the process will be nearly the same with all kinds of fish eggs, the only difference perhaps being that the eggs of some varieties will take a longer time to hatch than the eggs of others—I will now pass on to consider the question of fish growth.