Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — Fecundity of Flab. [ARTICLE]

Fecundity of Flab.

It is said that probably about 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 codfish are taken from the sea annually around the shores of Newfoundland. But even that quantity seems small when we consider that the cod yields something like 3,500,000 eggs each season, and that even 8,000,0 u have been found in the roe of a single cod. Other fish, though not equa ing th«> cod, sre alsp wcmddrfQlly productive. A herring, six or seven ounces in weight, is provided with about 30,000,000. 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 154,0u0,n00. Buffon said 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 globe on which we live. The cod far surpasses the herring in fecundity. Were it not that vast numbers of the eggs are destroyed fish wpuld sp multiply' as tq. fljl the waters fcpmpletely.