A FINNY BLOCKADE.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 29, Issue 39, 22 May 1917, Page 7

A FINNY BLOCKADE.

Although the sea may seem wpim oub enough to hold almost any n.hw-1 her of flsa, this is by no means the case. The roe of a fair-sized cod contains some 7 million eggs, hut in th* or-! dinary course of events only a very j small proportion of these are ever) hatched, for the r®e is considered a| great delicacy by hundreds of- fish,] and even the father cod- himself has j been known to devour it. . If all these eggs were hatched-, however, and the cod from them, reach-' ing maturity, bred once, the flam would fill the English Channel. AU f our warships which might happen .to be there at the time would be as helpless as though surrounded by. ice. 1 While, if it went on much .longer, the' Kaiser might march his army over a roadway of cod' to Britain. Sparrows also multiply with great rapidity, as instanced in the llni ; .e,d States. In 1862 a homesick'English settler, probably missing their cheery chirping, had a couple sent over to him, and set them free. The birds increased at an astonishing rate, and soon came L« flocks to pillage the groat Whitfields of the prairies. Even the apparently harmless white butterfly would become as great a pest as the locust is in warmer countries, were not such a number of tts young killed in their early stages. At Ahe end of three years its descendants, had they all lived, would amount to the almost incredible number of 100,000,000. Thus it is apparent that, w«re ft, not for the aedtos warfare which goes on among tr.e lower r.PsatKf**, they would become a m*a?ci> araiust mankind not to be lifehtfy reckoned with.