74 Bulletin of Laboratoties of Denison University. [Voi. xii 



up with great quickness. It will even turn round and examine 

 uneatable substances, as glass, &c., which come in contact 

 with its fins, and which presumably seem to it to require an 

 explanation. The rocklings have great powers of scent and 

 will set off in search of meat hidden in a bottle sunk in the 

 water. Moreover, a blind rockling will hunt for its food and 

 find it as easily as an uninjured one." 



The above, taken in connection with other passages, shows 

 that this author considers that the food is found largely by 

 scent and that the fin reaction is essentially tactile, though he 

 has seen the sense organs on the pelvic fins and recognizes their 

 resemblance to taste buds. 



Examination of stomach contents shows that the normal 

 food of these hake is largely crustaceans, particularly shrimps. 

 I fitted up a tank with some sea weed and put into it a large 

 number of prawns {Palaemonetes), mostly living, but some dead. 

 Upon putting the hake into this tank, they immediately ate 

 some of the dead prawns from the bottom and afterwards 

 caught the live ones, but very slowly and with many failures. 

 The response seems to be wholly visual. These fishes would 

 repeatedly pass directly over living prawns, touching them with 

 the fins or being brushed by their antennae, but so long as the 

 crustaceans were quiet they seemed not to notice them. If, 

 however, a prawn was killed and crushed and thrown back into 

 the water, it was immediately found. Upon another occasion 

 I put a live clam into the tank with the hake, where it re- 

 mained for several days, with siphons greatly extended. The 

 fishes repeatedly brushed over this siphon with their free fins 

 but never paid any attention to it, though if a similar siphon 

 were cut off from a live clam so as to allow some of the juices 

 to escape, it would be immediately taken and eaten. Evi- 

 dently live food is not clearly located by the gustatory organs 

 of the fins. 



Besides observing as fully as possible the normal feeding 

 habits of the hake, I experimented upon the reactions to 

 stimuli applied to both the pelvic and the filamentous dorsal 

 fins. As mentioned by Bateson, the pelvic fins are freely used 



