Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/371

Rh {| style="margin: 1em auto 1em auto;"


 * | Name of Fish.
 * colspan=2; | Weight of Fish.
 * | No. of Eggs.
 * | lb.
 * | oz.
 * Jack
 * | 28
 * | 0
 * | 292,320
 * | 32
 * | 0
 * | 595,200
 * | 4
 * | 8
 * | 42,840
 * Roach
 * | 0
 * | 12
 * | 480,480
 * Conger Eel
 * | 28
 * | 0
 * | 15,191,040
 * Smelt
 * | 0
 * | 2
 * | 36,652
 * Lump Fish
 * | 2
 * | 0
 * | 116,640
 * }
 * | 15,191,040
 * Smelt
 * | 0
 * | 2
 * | 36,652
 * Lump Fish
 * | 2
 * | 0
 * | 116,640
 * }
 * | 116,640
 * }

The Codfish (Gadus morrhua) is a good example of survival through fecundity. In a specimen weighing thirty pounds, with a roe of only four pounds and a quarter, it has been calculated that there were as many as 7,000,000 eggs, and in some cases the number may be 9,000,000. Here, besides other natural enemies, man again is a great destroyer. Describing the Codfishing off the coast of Labrador during the time of his visit (1833), Audubon writes:—"As there may not be less than one hundred schooners or 'pickaxes' in the harbour, three hundred boats resort to the bank each day; and, as each boat may procure two thousand Cods per diem, when Saturday night comes about six hundred thousand fishes have been brought to the harbour." According to Prof. Seeley:—"The banks of Newfoundland and adjacent coasts have been fished since the year 1500. Here one man may take upwards of five hundred fish in a day, and in a year he is reckoned to capture ten thousand, though sometimes fifteen thousand may be caught in a single voyage." As regards the wholesale destruction of the spawn of this fish, a single instance will suffice. In one bird colony alone on the wild coast of Norsk Finmarksen—that of Svaerholt-Klubben—are "millions upon millions" of the small Gull (Rissa tridactyla). The food of these multitudes of birds during the summer months consists for