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FECUNDITY OF FISH.

Piscatory authorities of the highest standard tell us that were it not for nature's grand "evening up" provisions, the fishes of the seas would multiply so rapidly that within three short years they would fill the waters to such an extent that there would be no room for them to swim. This will hardly be disputed when it is known that a single female cod will lay 45,000,000 eggs in a single season. It is said that other fish, though not equalling the cod, are also wonderfully productive. A herring, six or seven ounces in weight, is provided with about 30,000,G00 eggs. After making all reasonable allowances for the destruction of eggs and of the young, it has been calculated that in three years a single pair of herrings would produce 154,000,000. Buffon says that if a pair of herrings were left to breed and multiply undisturbed for a period of twenty years, they would yield a fish-bulk equal to the bulk of the globe on which we live.

SHARKS.

A shark's egg is oddly unprovided with shell; but the contents are protected by a thick leathery covering almost as elastic as india-rubber. Its average size is 2 by 23 inches and is almost black in color. Sharks are frequently seen during a transatlantic voyage. The white shark is voracious and merciless, but the tiger of the sea, as the hammerhead is called, is worse than that. He is the most repulsive looking fish that swims. He will take un the trail of a ship like a bloodhound, and his persistency is menacing and malignant. A white shark can be frightened or beaten off even after seizing his prey, but the hammerhead shuts his jaws like a bulldog and will be cut to pieces before he will let go. A man in the water may dodge the rush of a white shark, but the tiger never misses his mark. He is slower, but surer than the other. He is about 30 feet long and about the size of a flour barrel. A white shark may follow a ship for 24 hours, but not longer, when he will go cruising around after food. A hammerhead, estimated to be 30 feet long,

followed the English ship Red Lion, 2,180 miles on a voyage to Australia. Food was thrown to him many times, but he would not touch it.

In October, 1893, the Norwegian bark Saigon, timberladen from Quebec to Sunderland, and disabled on her beam-ends in mid-ocean by a hurricane, was surrounded by a school of man-eating sharks. The crew clung to the rigging as the vessel sank lower and lower, until finally rescued by boats from the British ship Victoria. Cheated of their prey the sharks leaped high around the boats, as if they meant to force their way on board. In 1871, the brig Southern Cross, from Calcutta to London, was wrecked on Nelson Island, at the northern end of the Indian Ocean, and three passengers and the crew of 14 men took to a raft. The wind blew them to sea instead of shoreward, and their raft was surrounded by hammerhead sharks during that morning. By sundown, when it was sighted by a north bound craft, only one of the 17 castaways was left. Although the sharks could not upset the raft, they had leaped upon it and knocked the men overboard. There are numerous instances where divers have had to combat sharks below the surface of the

waves.

SWORD FISH.

The sword fish is the master of the seas among fish. In its encounters with whales the latter are invariably killed. They can sometimes do great damage to vessels. One capsized a large seine-boat, a few years ago, belonging to the fishing schooner Centennial, of Gloucester, and left part of its sword protruding through the solid planking and sheathing six inches above the boat's bottom. The Norwegian bark Lorenzo had quite recently a sample of the strength of a sword fish. Through the metal sheathing of her hull, then through six inches of planking, and penetrating the inner ceiling about three inches, the fish had driven its sword, resulting in a leak which kept the crew at the pumps for six hours a day. The "sword" was about 2 inches in circumference at the point, and 5 inches at the end where it had broken off, the piece being about 20 inches long.

STRANGE FISH FACTS.

It has been shown that the life of a fish is very great. Hundred of fish are still alive in the royal aquarium in St. Petersburg that were placed there more than 150 years ago.

Fish Talk. Curious sounds are uttered by some of the denizens of the ocean. That small, highly colored fish known as the hæmulon has been known to grunt loudly when taken from the water. The gizzard shad utters a note that can be heard some distance. The eel is said to make a noise that is almost musical. The dogfish utters the loudest sound of any fish. When taken from the water it sometimes gives a loud croak, and keeps it up as if in great agony. The sound of the drumfish can be heard while they are in the water. There is a fish in China seas which makes a sound by clapping its teeth together. The Australian lung-fish utters a singular barking sound at night that can be heard a long distance. Whales when stranded utter cries. These sounds of fish are the expression of their emotions, and have some meaning, either as a call, one individual to another, or as a communication of some kind.

The eyes of deep-sea fish are very varied; some have neither eyes nor sight; others have greatly enlarged eyeballs. Sunlight cannot penetrate to any great depth. Some fish are phosphorescent and therefore luminous, some being able to throw out their light at will or extinguish it in time of danger. Fish with large eyes may have a better chance of finding food, but they cannot wholly depend upon sight, since some have quite abandoned all attempts to see.

When a carp breathes, a wonderful mechanism is in motion. People marvel at the construction of a human being, with its 492 bones, 60 arteries, etc.; but a carp has 432 veins, 99 muscles, and, every time it breathes it moves no less than 4,386 bones and muscles.

The proclivity of barnacles to adhere to ships' bottoms is well known to the veriest landlubber, but it is not so well known that these objectionable marine growths will sustain and have actually sustained human life for quite a period, as an emergency diet.

Sturgeons sometimes attain great size. One captured in Yerik Bay, on the Don, weighed 72 poods or about 2,600 pounds, English. One this size would give about 10 poods of caviare, having a marketable value of 1,000 rubles.

Codfish at certain times of the year, just before migration begins and after it is completed, are said to take sand into their stomachs for "ballast," which is discharged after the fish return.

Fish can change their color at will. Many make remarkable changes. The fish that change most are the bottom feeders. They are able marvellously to adapt themselves to the color of their surroundings.

Flying fish swim in shoals varying in number from a dozen to a hundred or more. They often leave the water at once, darting through the air in the same direction for 200 yards or more, and then descending to the water quickly, rising again, and then renewing their flight. The power of flight is limited to the time their fins remain moist.

Fish have friendships. Porpoises are sometimes greatly attached to each other. Pet seals become attached to their keepers. The mother whale becomes most dangerous when her calf is killed by the whalers. Goldfish even can be tamed to manifest friendly intelligence. Sturgeons have made friendships with men.

Newfoundland's annual catch of codfish sometimes reaches one hundred million.

A fish dealer in Bath, Me., on cutting open a yellow perch found a 20-penny nail.

One curious result of the hurricane that struck the Southern coast some years ago was the killing of quantities of fish. For many days after the storm the coast around Savannah and throughout the stretch where its force was most vented, was strewn with dead fish of all kinds.

The normal temperature of the shark is 77° Fahr., of the oyster, 82°, of the porpoise, 100°.

FISH PROFITS.

The average value of the product of agricultural lands

per acre or square mile is often computed, but there are seldom similar computations relating to the sea. The North Sea is one of the best of the world's fish fields. Its area is 225,884 square miles. The average yearly value of the fish catch is $41,000,000, so that every square mile averages $18.15.

The American fisheries are represented by an annual catch of 1,696,000,000 pounds, worth $47,180,000. They are caught as follows: 616,000,000 pounds from the waters of the New England States; 596,000,000, Middle Atlantic States; 59,000,000, South Atlantic States; 84,000,000, Gulf States; 147,000,000, Pacific States; and 64,000,000 from Alaska; in the Great Lakes, 108,000,000, and interior fisheries, 19,000,000.

NAVIES.

ANCIENT AND MODERN NAVIES.

FROM the construction of the great steam propelled vessels of to-day it is interesting to cast a glance at the naval architecture of the past. Of the infancy of the art of naval architecture we know little. It is almost certain, however, that the first vessels in use were not large, for the largest of the Grecian fleet at the siege of Troy, 1184 B. C., carried only 120 men. These vessels were all propelled by oars and had no decks. Such sails as they had were merely auxiliary to the oars, which were not discarded until a much later day. Fighting at sen had not then come into fashion and it is not until 500 years later that we read of vessels being built with a view to encountering enemies afloat. By this time the oars had been increased in number and arranged in banks, one above the other. The fighting men were stationed

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