MOUNT DESERT REGION 7 



the younger veil presented a small blastoderm at one pole of 

 the egg' with the germ ring well developed. The embryos of 

 some teleosts with a similar type of pelagic eggs as described 

 in the literature are known to reach the corresponding stage 

 of development in four or five hours. 



We may not unreasonably assign about twdce that period 

 for these embryos, on account of the cold water of this region 

 (about 14° C). It is also known that many teleosts spawm 

 in the early morning. It may therefore be concluded with a 

 considerable degree of certainty that the younger veil was 

 spawned and fertilized eight to twelve hours previously on 

 the morning of the day it was found. It may be said with 

 almost as great a degree of certainty that the embryos of the 

 older veil could hardly have been more than a day older than 

 those of the younger, and hence were spawned on the morning 

 of the preceding day. That the two veils were found in the 

 same place entangled in the piles, twenty-four hours apart 

 in development, leads to the probable inference that both 

 veils were spawned from the same female from the two 

 ovaries twenty-four hours apart. 



A part of each veil was left at the dock, and on returning, 

 four days later, the first veil had disappeared, but part of the 

 one outside the dock remained, which upon examination 

 showed that it had not progressed as far as that part of it 

 taken to the laboratory. The average water temperature in 

 Sorrento Harbor at that time is in the neighborhood of 

 14° C, which is about 3° under the w^ater temperature in the 

 laboratory. Allowance, of course, must be made for slower 

 development in colder water when estimating the rate of 

 development of these embryos under natural conditions. 



Several pieces of each veil were brought into the laboratory 

 and placed in aquaria. Each day embryos were taken out, 

 and drawn while alive. Specimens were also fixed and pre- 

 served each day for future study. 



The embryos lie in a single layer in the mucus of the veil 

 in capsule-like spaces containing from one to three or four 

 eggs (fig. 1). The capsules sometimes slightly overlap each 



