GENERAL FACTS ABOUT SEA FISH 45 



ing them in the water, and a knowledge of this fact is utilised 

 in a suggestion for rough-and-ready fish-culture at sea, some 

 account of which will be found at the end of Chapter II. 

 This milt, however, is exceedingly small in some fishes, 

 particularly in the sole, in respect of which Cunningham, 

 a great authority on the species, suggests that, " until a few 

 years ago," not only fishermen, but others (presumably 

 meaning scientific men) believed in the hermaphroditism, or 

 double sex, of each individual.* This fact, that the milt of 

 a single male can fertilise the eggs of several females of the 

 same species, is a useful provision in view of the numerical 

 superiority of the females in most fishes, as in ourselves and 

 most other higher vertebrates. In addition to their usually 

 superior number, the females have also, as a rule, the advan- 

 tage in size, a character in which they agree less perhaps with 

 many other vertebrates than with spiders and some other 

 creatures without backbone. Dr. Wemyss Fulton, the able 

 Secretary of the Scotch Fishery Board, has investigated these 

 relations of the sexes in both size and number, and with very 

 interesting results. Thus, to take an example, the female of 

 the long rough dab {Hippoglossoides) exceeds all the other 

 fishes tabulated by him on these grounds, and in both size and 

 numbers as compared with the male, the proportion in 

 numbers being more than 5 to i, and in size nearly 4 to 3. 

 As a contrast, the female angler-fi.sh {^Lophius) is not only 

 smaller (practically 17 to 20) in proportion to the male than 

 in any other fish on Dr. Fulton's list, but is also, with one 

 exception (a tie), fewer in proportionate number (i to 4). 

 On the other hand, in case any m.ight feel the inclination to 

 generalise from only two cases, it may be added that in the 

 lumpsucker {Cyclopterus) the females, while numbering only 

 I to 4 of the males, are more than half as long again. It 

 is questionable whether, until at any rate we have figures 

 based on a larger series of observations than those recorded 

 * Marketable Marine Fishes, p. 74. 



