VIVIPAKOUS FISH. 115 



In Cuvier's 'Animal Kingdom' (vol. i. 'Fish'), 

 all I can glean is that the blenny is viviparous. 

 Yarrel, in his ' British Fishes/ speaks of a Mr. 

 Low, who put a number of the small fishes (the 

 young of the blenny) in a tumbler of sea-water, 

 in which they increased in size, but eventually 

 died from the want of fresh-water. Again, he 

 quotes a Mr. Neil, who saw in the Edinburgh 

 market, in 1K07, several dozens of young fish es- 

 cape alive from the female. ' The arrangement 

 of the perfectly-formed young in the foetal sac of 

 the gravid female is very remarkable.' 



It is quite clear from the above quotations that 

 there is an analogy, if not a close one, between 

 the reproductive organs of the blenny and those 

 of the viviparous fish from the North-west seas ; 

 for ' the foetal sac of the gravid female ' evidently 

 means that there is a kind of placental sac, in 

 which the young are contained; but it leaves us 

 quite as much in the dark as ever as to how foetal 

 life is supported. As the ova deposited in the 

 usual way (when fecundated) contains all that 

 is requisite for the development of the embryo, 

 it is just possible that the same process goes on in 

 the womb of the female viviparous fish, and that 

 the foetal sac is only a wrapper, formed by the 



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