1915] The Ottawa Naturalist. 113 



amining the structure of these rare specimens. Like the Scot- 

 tish examples, they were over half an inch in length, oval in 

 shape, and of a whitish yellow colour. The colour is due to 

 the creamy yoke inside the horny shell, for the shell is very 

 transparent, and somewhat thickened at the apices. Each end 

 or apex of the egg rose into a protruding mound, from which 

 projected forty or fifty slender threads, about a fifth of an inch 

 long. At its root each thread was enlarged and outspread, 

 but diminished distally and became slender, until near the free 

 tip, it enlarged again and expanded in the flattened form of a 

 hooked head. They cannot be described simply as "thread- 

 shaped hooks,'" to use Ludwig's phrase, or as "knobbed pro- 

 cesses," according to Professor Thomson's description. They 

 vary so much in shape that hardly two are alike. Most of them 

 may be likened to a bent and half-closed hand, the wrist very 

 slender and the fingers much flattened. Inside each finger tip, 

 a cushion or pad studded with short but very sharp points 

 occtn-s. Some of the expanded hands or heads possess two fin- 

 gers only, others have three, but a great many have four, and a 

 few seem to possess five. Usually the fingers are curved over 

 as described, but many are bent in various ways, some turned 

 up, or twisted sideways, just as the fingers of the hand may be 

 variously contorted. The whole of the flattened edge of the 

 "finger tip " may in some cases be studded with minute denticles 

 or teeth ; indeed these toothed surfaces are so variously turned 

 that they grasp or cling to anything and everything which 

 comes in contact with them. When once hooked to any object 

 they are as difficult to detach as some of the familiar seeds which 

 cling to one's clothing when walking through the bush. The 

 eggs were entangled with each other when I first examined 

 them, and they could be separated only at the risk of tearing 

 off some of the hooked threads. 



These rare and interesting specimens were procured by a 

 Bay of Fundy fisherman, attached to each other, and to the 

 rope or line of a baited trawl set for pollack, between Campbell's 

 Island and the Wolves, New Brunswick, vv^here the depth ranges 

 from 40 to SO and, in somic places. 70 fathoms. The parent 

 fish are said to burrow in the mud or sand at depths of 40 to 300 

 fathoms, and to protrude the snout only, so that they are rarely 

 procured, excepting when they emerge and swim about in search 

 of prey. As already stated, they bore into hooked cod and 

 haddock, passing eel-like into the abdominal cavity of the fish, 

 or at times they suck in thc^ baited hook set for superior fish, 

 and the hook is swallowed so far down the gullet that the fisher- 

 men usually cut off the head of the hagfish, to make them dis- 

 gorge the hook being practically impossible. 



