Page:Growing Up (1928).djvu/49

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thing that looks like the roe but which is smoother and softer. This is the milt. It is a kind of jelly with millions of sperms in it.

The fish in which you find the eggs or roe is the mother fish. The fish in which you find the sperms or milt is the father fish. It is the milt or sperms of the father fish that starts the eggs of the mother fish growing.

When the mother or roe shad swims away from the ocean and up into the fresh water she does not swim alone. Hundreds of other roe shad swim with her. The roe shad swim until they find the father or buck shad, hundreds of which have gone up the river ahead of them. Then from an opening underneath her body each mother shad sends her eggs into the water. The father shad swims immediately after her and sends out over the eggs a liquid that looks very much like skimmed milk. It is alive with sperms that are too small to be seen.

As soon as a sperm meets an egg it swims right into it. The tail of the sperm drops off and stays outside the egg, but the rest of the sperm joins with the egg just as the pollen from one