246 NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



from the ripe fisli when it is handled. But whenever I have 

 inquired as to the spawning of the conger the answer I have 

 received from fishermen is that nobody knows, and that 

 no one ever saw a roe in a conger at alL A naturalist who is 

 acquainted with the obscurity which for two centuries, in 

 spite of earnest investigations, concealed the structure and 

 functions of the generative organs of the eel family, cannot 

 wonder at the confessed ignorance of the fishermen on the 

 subject. No one has yet, I believe, seen the fertilized egg 

 of either the eel or the conger, although the ovaries and 

 testes have been recognised and described. When I took 

 some conger and examined the internal organs I found no 

 difficulty in recognising the roe or ovary. In a large speci- 

 men, four to five feet long, the ovary is seen as a broad 

 white mass in the shape of a ribbon, running on each side 

 along the body cavity ; on the side towards the intestine the 

 ribbon is smooth, but on the other side it bears a number of 

 thin flat plates, attached to it transversely, and lying close to 

 one another face to face like the leaves of a book. Each 

 of these leaves is made up almost entirely of eggs, which are 

 supported by a tissue consisting apparently of fat-cells. 

 When this ovary is shown to a fisherman he says it is simply 

 the fat of the fish, and evidently does not believe it has 

 anything to do with spawn. The organ is of milky-white 

 colour, and resembles fat closely in appearance, but the 

 microscope reveals the eggs in it beyond all possibility of 

 mistake ; and lately, in a specimen four feet ten inches long, 

 the separate eggs could be seen in every part of the ovary 

 with the naked eye like grains of millet seed. There must 

 be over a million eggs in each ovary, indeed, the number 

 of ova has been calculated by different observers to 

 reach several millions. Otto Hermes in Berlin estimated 

 3,300,000 in a pair of ovaries weighing twenty-two and a 

 half pounds, while Mr. Jackson, at the Southport Aquarium, 

 estimated over 6,300,000 eggs in a pair of ovaries weighing 

 only seven pounds. Mr. Jackson's specimen died in June, 

 and if its ovaries were ripe and ready for spawning, as we 

 may presume they were, then we may conclude that it is 

 probably in June that congers naturally spawn. Neverthe- 



