away, are nicely packed in boxes among wet moss, and they suffer very little injury if there be no delay in the transit. [Illustration: ARTIFICIAL MODE OF SPAWNING.] “How about the streams from which the eggs are brought?” I asked. “Does this robbery of the spawn not injure them?” “Oh, no; we find that it makes no difference whatever. The fish are so enormously fecund that the eggs can be got in any quantity, and no difference be felt in the parent waters;what we obtain here are a mere percentage of the grand totals deposited by the fish.” Of course, as the operations are pursued over a large district of two countries, no immediate difference will be felt; but how if these Huningue _explorateurs_ go on for years taking away tens of thousands of eggs? Will that not ultimately prove a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul? I know full well that all kinds of fish are enormously prolific, and the reader would see from the figures given in a former section that it is so; but suppose a river, with the breeding power of the Tay, was annually robbed of a few million eggs, the result must some day be a slight difference in the productive power of the water. I would like to know with exactitude if, while the waters of France are being replenished, the rivers in Switzerland and Germany are not beginning to be in their turn impoverished? It surely stands to reason that if the impoverishment of streams resulting from natural causes be aided by the carrying away of the eggs by zealous _explorateurs_, they must become in a short time almost totally barren of fish. The best plan, in my opinion, is for each river to have its own breeding-ponds on the plan of those of Stormontfield on the river Tay which I will by and by describe.[1]