Page - 1065 - in The Complete Aristotle

Some fishes breed at all seasons, as the muraena. This animal lays a great number of eggs at a time; and the young when hatched are very small but grow with great rapidity, like the young of the hippurus, for these fishes from being diminutive at the outset grow with exceptional rapidity to an exceptional size. (Be it observed that the muraena breeds at all seasons, but the hippurus only in the spring. The smyrus differs from the smyraena; for the muraena is mottled and weakly, whereas the smyrus is strong and of one uniform colour, and the colour resembles that of the pine-tree, and the animal has teeth inside and out. They say that in this case, as in other similar ones, the one is the male, and the other the female, of a single species. They come out on to the land, and are frequently caught.) Fishes, then, as a general rule, attain their full growth with great rapidity, but this is especially the case, among small fishes, with the coracine or crow-fish: it spawns, by the way, near the shore, in weedy and tangled spots. The orphus also, or sea-perch, is small at first, and rapidly attains a great size. The pelamys and the tunny breed in the Euxine, and nowhere else. The cestreus or mullet, the chrysophrys or gilt-head, and the labrax or basse, breed best where rivers run into the sea. The orcys or large-sized tunny, the scorpis, and many other species spawn in the open sea. < div id=“section78” class=“section” title=“11”> 11 Fish for the most part breed some time or other during the three months between the middle of March and the middle of June. Some few breed in autumn: as, for instance, the saupe and the sargus, and such others of this sort as breed shortly before the autumn equinox; likewise the electric ray and the angel-fish. Other fishes breed both in winter and in summer, as was previously observed: as, for instance, in winter-time the basse, the grey mullet, and the belone or pipe-fish; and in summer-time, from the middle of June to the middle of July, the female tunny, about the time of the summer solstice; and the tunny lays a sac-like enclosure in which are contained a number of small eggs. The ryades or shoal-fishes breed in summer. Of the grey mullets, the chelon begins to be in roe between the middle of November and the middle of December; as also the sargue, and the smyxon or myxon, and the cephalus; and their period of gestation is thirty days. And, by the way, some of the grey mullet species are not produced from copulation, but grow spontaneously from mud and sand. As a general rule, then, fishes are in roe in the spring-time; while some, as 1065