364 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



widespread and as plentiful as it is in the western Baltic (where it is now known 

 to be a common bottom fish, though formerly looked on as decidedly rare), for we 

 took its pelagic larvae off Seguin Island, near Cape Elizabeth, over Platts Bank, 

 near the Isles of Shoals, off Ipswich Bay, off Cape Ann, off Boston Harbor, and 

 in the southwest basin of the Gulf off Cape Cod during March, April, and May, 

 1920. It has not been reported on the offshore banks, but may be expected there. 



Habits. — Little is known of the habits of the snake blenny on either side of the 

 Atlantic. Although it is not found along the littoral zone, it is a fish of compara- 

 tively shoal water, never taken as deep as 100 fathoms (so far as we have been able 

 to learn) and apparently most common from a fathom or so below tide mark down 

 to 40 or 50 fathoms ; while as most of the specimens that have been caught in Scottish 

 waters were picked up by the foot rope of the otter or beam trawl, Sim's '' suggestion 

 that it burrows in mud or clay bottom is probably correct. 



Food. — ^Amphipods, copepods, and other tiny Crustacea, with very small 

 starfish, small bivalves, and holothurians have been found in snake-blenny stomachs 

 in British seas. These blennies are eaten in their turn by large fish — cod and 

 halibut, for example, in Massachusetts Bay,^" pollock in the Bay of Fundy, and cod 

 in Northumberland Strait, Gulf of St. Lawrence, as Capt. Thor Iversen informed 

 Doctor Huntsman from his experience during the Canadian Fisheries Expedition 

 of 1915. 



Breeding hahits. — The spawning season has been stated as autumn or winter in 

 north Scandinavian seas on the strength of Nilsson's-^ report of the capture of 

 a spent female at Christmas time, consonant with which is the fact that its larvae 

 have been taken in tow nets from February to March in the Baltic on the one side 

 of the North Atlantic and from March to May in the Gulf of Maine on the other. 

 It may, however, commence spawning by late summer or early autumn, Sim having 

 found its roe well advanced in development as early in the season as the end of 

 April. 



Neither the ripe fish nor the eggs of this species have ever been seen, but the 

 latter probably sink and stick together like those of its relative, the rock eel. 

 Apparently the larvte are of considerable size at hatching, for the smallest we have 

 taken (the smallest on record) were about 11 mm. long", though they still lacked any 

 trace of the dorsal and anal fin rays. Snake-blenny larvte are very slender, resem- 

 bling the corresponding stages of the rock eel and of the launce in general appearance, 

 but are distinguishable from both of these species by the fact that the vent is situated 

 considerably in front of the midlength of the trunk. A still more diagnostic feature 

 is the presence of a large black chromatophore at the base of each pectoral fi;i and 

 a double row of 6 to 9 black spots along the dorsal surface of the intestine with 

 several about the vent, which are very conspicuous by contrast with the colorless 

 body, whether it be transparent in life or opaque white after preservation. The 

 first traces of the dorsal and anal fin rays are to be seen at a length of 20 to 21 mm., 

 while the tiny ventral fins are visible in a specimen of 34 mm., and our largest 



" » Journal, The Linnean Society, Zoology, Vol. XX, 1890, p. 38. London. 

 »» Goodo and Bean, 1879, p. 10. 

 " Skandinavisk Fauna, vol. 4, 1855, p. 195. Lund. 



