391 



at all. It still seems to me that I was entitled to object to the statement 

 that Miiller's paper contained the greater part of my results in nuce, 

 or in any other manner. I do not agree with Prof. Weber that my 

 merit would have been the same if I had simply rediscovered Müllers 

 results independently. A scientific investigator almost daily, indepen- 

 dently discovers things which as he afterwards finds have been made 

 known before, but he takes no credit for, and does not if he can avoid 

 it publish such rediscoveries. As Prof. Weber's says everyone can by 

 comparing the two papers find out what was Miiller's contribution, 

 and what mine, to our knowledge of the sexual organs of 3Iyxme. 



With reference to the ova in the Göteborg Museum I have one or 

 two things to say. The date 1884 quoted in my remarks in the Zool. 

 Anz. as that of the taking of these eggs was a printer's error, or pos- 

 sibly a slip of my own. I meant to write 185-4 as it stands in the report 

 of Prof. Weber's communication. But with respect to the date 

 )'5. August(f given on the label of the specimens in question, Dr. Anton 

 Stuxberg informs me by letter that the late Professor A. W. Malm 

 says in his »Vertebrate Fauna of Bohuslän«, that the ova were present- 

 ed to the Museum of Göteborg in Aug. 5 1854, and that they had 

 been found the year before : that they were taken from the stomach of 

 a cod, but as to the time of year when they were found nothing is 

 known, and the person who found them has been dead several years. 

 It follows therefore that no conclusion whatever can be drawn from 

 the label of the Göteborg specimens as to the time of year at which 

 the oviposition oî Myxine takes place. With regard to Prof. Weber's 

 opinion that the time of year is at Alvärströmmen about October or 

 November, I pointed out that the evidence he went upon, as he him- 

 self will readily admit, was inconclusive. I wished to insist upon the 

 almost certain criterion of the occurrence of oviposition at a given 

 time, which I had discovered, namely the capture of recently spent 

 females. This year I have taken several females in this condition in 

 April in May and in the first half of June, so that there are now 

 6 months of the year, Nov. to June inclusive, in which it is in my 

 opinion certain that eggs oi Myxine are deposited near St. Abb's Head. 

 I ought not to have spoken on a previous occasion of oviposition 

 being limited to a certain time of year. I meant that it was proved to 

 take place during and to extend throughout a period mentioned. I now 

 expect to find that recently spent females can be captured in any 

 month of the year, and that oviposition is therefore not limited to a 

 particular season. 



As to the question of hermaphrodites and males the probability 

 of all females being hermaphrodite when young was the least impor- 



