Of all eggs, the most interesting, I think, are the fishes’. Nearly all of these are pretty small, little round whitish globules like sugar pills. Some, like the eggs of trout and salmon which one finds in the gravel banks of rapid streams, are as large as fair-sized beads. Many, like the eggs of sea fish which float near the surface of the ocean, would go thru the eye of a darning needle.

The point, however, which makes them especially interesting is that so many of them are like tiny glass marbles. The membrane around them is so clear, and the substance of the egg itself so transparent, that with a magnifying glass, one can look right thru the egg, and see the little white fleck inside grow from nothing at all to a real fish, long enough to reach clear round the egg and lie with its tail almost in its mouth.

Some eggs are much clearer than others. The clearest are, at first, like clear glass, so that they can not be seen at all under water. Soon, however, a tiny vague white spot begins to form on the lower side. Then one can make out that the egg is covered with a rather thick membrane, that within this is a narrow, clear space filled with water, while within this and still smaller, floats the tiny yolk which is the real egg that is going to become the little fish.

The white spot on the yolk is not itself fish, but only fish stuff, which is being made ready to turn into fish by and by. The spot grows larger and thicker, until it looks like a round dab of putty stuck on the side of a marble. When this cap has grown until it is about half as much in diameter as the egg itself, it thins in the middle and thickens at the edges, until it forms a ring. A very strange thing, thereupon, happens to this ring. It begins to grow; and as it grows, it keeps slipping farther and farther round the egg. Soon it has become a band round the middle of the egg. Then as it moves along still farther to the other side of the egg, it has, of course, to grow smaller in order to fit. So it does, and the extra length taken in at one point in the ring, forms the body of the little fish. The head has already begun to form from a thickening at one side of the ring before it passed the middle of the egg. The two sides of the ring form the two halves of the body. But the tail being easier to make, does not grow out until much later.

Now there is a head and a body; but the only difference is that the head is bigger. Neither has any parts. There are no eyes, ears, nose, or mouth in one; nor any fins, backbone, stomach, nor scales in the other. These all appear later, much as in the chick—eyes, ears, brain, and heart early; fins and tail, scales and the whole front of the body not until long afterwards.

Many learned men have spent their entire lives in studying the way in which all these various parts form in the young animal, and a most strange and fascinating study it is, quite worth any man’s spending his life on. If I were to tell all that is known about the least part of one fish, the tale would fill up this entire book and leave no room for anything else. I shall, therefore, tell about the eyes only—partly because they are interesting and important organs; but more because they happen to be parts of the body which form in the same manner in all animals that have a backbone, whether they are fishes, frogs, birds, four-footed beasts, or human beings. The eyes with which you, my reader, are reading this page, grew in the way I shall describe, as I have myself seen it in the egg of cod and sea-bass.

In general, the part of the body to form earliest is the brain. Next after that come the eyes. These begin as two buds which grow out one on each side of the brain where the head is going to be. Each is a hollow, bubble-like affair on a short stalk; as much as anything, except for size, like a hollow rubber ball stuck on a pencil stub. One would think that this hollow ball would simply change into an eyeball; but it doesn’t, for Nature rarely does things simply. Instead, one side of the eye-bud folds in, as you might push in a hollow rubber ball with your finger, until it forms a cup. This cup is the eyeball. The sides grow out until the hole narrows down to the dark opening in the middle of the eye which we call the pupil. Various kinds of eye-stuff grow over the edge and form the interior parts of the eye; other tissues on the outside thicken the walls and form the transparent cornea in front; and while the pupil is still large, a portion of the substance which is later to become the skin, buds into the eyeball to form the lens of the eye. The reason, then, for this round-about process, this doubling in of the original eye bud to make a cup, which afterwards closes down to the eyeball we finally use, is to get various substances inside the eye, and finally to leave a pupil for the light to enter.

Thus far, like the little chick, the little fish has had no front to its body. It lies on the yolk, curled round it like a child with the stomach ache hugging a pillow. By and by the tail grows out free of the yolk. The head also lifts clear, and the lower jaw has room to form. Last of all, the sides of the body grow completely round the yolk, and put it where it will do the most good.

Now the fish is ready to hatch. For some time it has been giving occasional wiggles inside the egg membrane; finally it breaks thru and floats out. It is a tiny helpless creature, still more than half yolk. It cannot swim, but floats, belly up, and mouth wide open, not yet able so much as to close its jaws.

From this time on, the fish grows rapidly, living on the yolk, which grows smaller and smaller. At first the little creature floating on its back can only give an occasional wiggle. As the yolk becomes more manageable, the fish wiggles more. Soon it turns for a moment on its side, then clear over; and by the time the last of the yolk has disappeared, it is swimming right side up and has begun to eat the still tinier water creatures which are its food. At this stage, if it is a fresh water fish, it begins to be visible in the shallows in schools of minute, but veritable, fishes a quarter inch long and mostly eyes.