546 Order Pediculati : The Anglers 



" The angler, or goosefish, spawns in summer along the eastern 

 Atlantic coast, and the result of its labor is quite remarkable. 

 1 The eggs are very numerous, inclosed in a ribbon-shaped gelat- 

 inous mass, about a foot in width and thirty or forty feet long, 

 which floats near the surface. One of these ribbons will weigh 

 perhaps forty pounds, and is usually partially folded together and 

 visible a foot or eighteen inches from the top of the water, its 

 color being brownish purple. The number of eggs in one of 

 these has been estimated to be from forty to fifty thousand.' 

 The growth of the young after exclusion from the egg is rather 

 rapid, and Professor Goode saw 'young fish two or three inches 

 long ' while others were yet spawning, and these young fish 

 were presumably the fry of those that had spawned the same 

 year, only somewhat earlier. In a few days after hatching 

 they present a striking appearance on account of the enormous 

 development of the pectoral and ventral fins." 



Aristotle gives, according to Professor Horace A. Hoffman, 

 this account of the angler: '"Inasmuch as the flat, front part 

 is not fleshy, nature has compensated for this by adding to the 

 rear and the tail as much fleshy substance as has been sub- 

 tracted from the front.' The fidrpaxos is called the angler. 

 He fishes with the hair-like filaments hung before his eyes. 

 On the end of each filament is a little knob, just as if it had 

 been placed there for a bait. He makes a disturbance in sandy 

 or muddy places, hides himself and raises these filaments. When 

 the little fish strikes at them he leads them down with the 

 filaments until he brings them to his mouth. The fidrpaxos is 

 one of the <re\axrj. All the ae\dxrf are viviparous or ovovi- 

 viparous except the fiarpaxos. The other flat o-eXaxn have 

 their gills uncovered and underneath them, but the fidrpaxos 

 has its gills on the side and covered with skinny opercula, not 

 with horny opercula like the fish which are not <re\axaodrj. 

 Some fishes have the gall-bladder upon the liver, others have 

 it upon the intestine, more or less remote from the liver and 

 attached to it by a duct. Such are fidrpaxos, e\Xo<p, a way pis, 

 (rpvpaiva, and gupias. The fldrpaxos is the only one of 

 the aekdxrf which is oviparous. This is on account of the 

 nature of its body, for it has a head many times as large as the 

 rest of its body, and spiny and very rough. For this same 



