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Gregarious fish are not found in any numbers in the rivers; they
frequent the lagunes, whence, at the season of breeding, they proceed
in shoals towards the sea. The males lead the way, and drop their
milt as they go, while the females, following close behind, eagerly
swallow it down. From this they conceive, and when, after passing
some time in the sea, they begin to be in spawn, the whole shoal sets
off on its return to its ancient haunts. Now, however, it is no
longer the males, but the females, who take the lead: they swim in
front in a body, and do exactly as the males did before, dropping,
little by little, their grains of spawn as they go, while the males in
the rear devour the grains, each one of which is a fish. A portion of
the spawn escapes and is not swallowed by the males, and hence come the
fishes which grow afterwards to maturity. Whan any of this sort of
fish are taken on their passage to the sea, they are found to have the
left side of the head scarred and bruised; while if taken on their
return, the marks appear on the right. The reason is that as they
swim down the Nile seaward, they keep close to the bank of the river
upon their left, and returning again up stream they still cling to the
same side, hugging it and brushing against it constantly, to be sure
that they miss not their road through the great force of the current.
When the Nile begins to rise, the hollows in the land and the marshy
spots near the river are flooded before any other places by the
percolation of the water through the riverbanks; and these, almost as
soon as they become pools, are found to be full of numbers of little
fishes. I think that I understand how it is this comes to pass. On
the subsidence of the Nile the year before, though the fish retired
with the retreating waters, they had first deposited their spawn in the
mud upon the banks; and so, when at the usual season the water
returns, small fry are rapidly engendered out of the spawn of the
preceding year. So much concerning the fish.
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