WHITING 



141 



interesting period. The young fish found at Plymouth this 

 year ran as small as 5 milHmetres both in July and August, 

 and at this size they contained no perceptible food. This may 

 mean, as in the case of the lemon sole, that the babies first 

 supplement the yolk with single-celled organisms which they 

 digest very quickly. At 6 millimetres they were eating the 

 copepods and their larvae. Experiments have shown that at 

 this stage till they are 9 millimetres long they prefer the copepod 

 Pseudocalanus to all other food, but as this species is not very 

 abundant in early summer they take Acartia and Calanus as 

 a 'pis oiler. Temora, on the other hand, which is the favourite 

 food of soles and dabs, is hardly ever touched by baby whiting. 

 These Plymouth fry in July and August were some of them as 

 much as 22 millimetres, or 0-8 inch long. At this stage they 



Fig 15. — Baby whiting 0-16 (4-3 mm.) long. (Drawn by Miss M. V. Lebour.) 



begin to eat young fish — some of them half their own size ! By 

 September the whiting hatched in March were 2-5 to 3-3 inches 

 in length. They therefore, as was natural in captivity, grew 

 rather more slowly than the rate calculated roughly by Fulton ^ 

 in 1889, who stated it thus for young whiting at large in the 

 North Sea : 



Fulton also found that whiting were mature at 9 inches — that 

 is to say (sometimes) in their second winter. 



Hjort caught young whiting (size not stated) at 20 fathoms 

 on the north slope of the Dogger, temperature 50° F. Their 

 stomachs seemed to contain sand only, but on examination it 

 was found that mixed with the sand were quantities of minute 



Eep. F. B. S., p 157. 



