NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 247 



less, the condition of the last ovary I examined (on November 

 3rd) leads me to believe that spawning" takes place earlier in 

 the year, at all events off Plymouth. 



A single specimen o£ the male conger was discovered by 

 Otto Hermes (' Zool. Anz./ 1881). It died in the Berlin 

 Aquarium in June, 1880; it was two feet six inches long, 

 and the testes were similar in position to the ovaries, but 

 differed from these in being divided into lobes, and entirely 

 surrounded by a smooth membrane, the seminal fluid passing 

 to the exterior by a special efferent duct. The organs were 

 ripe and contained mature, actively moving spermatozoa. I 

 have opened altogether fifteen congers. Seven of these were 

 chosen on account of their small size, two feet four inches 

 to two feet ten inches in length ; but every one of the fifteen 

 was a female, and as yet I have not seen the male. 



The Spawn of the Pilchard. — Up to the present I have not 

 met with any pilchards in a sexually mature condition. 

 Nearly all the available information concerning the breeding 

 of this species is directly or indirectly derived from accounts 

 of his own observations published by Mr. Dunn, of Meva- 

 gissey. One of these accounts is contained in the official 

 report of Frank Buckland and Spencer Walpole on the 

 British Fisheries, 1879, App. iii. It is there stated that 

 pilchards spawn fifteen or twenty miles from land, and at or 

 near the surface ; that on May 28th, 1871, Mr. Dunn took 

 a pilchard in the act of spawning twenty miles from laud, 

 and pressed out its spawn into a bucket of sea-water, when 

 the eggs all floated separately at the top of the water, but 

 died after two hours because they were unfertilised ; when 

 dead they sauk to the bottom. But in a letter which Mr. 

 Dunn kindly sent me recently in answer to some questions 

 I put to him, he says that he is certain that some pilchards 

 spawn late in December and early in January, because he 

 has known shotten pilchards return to the bays as early as 

 the 1 1th of January. It is thus possible enough that the 

 pilchard has two principal spawning seasons on this coast, 

 one in winter, in December and January, one in June and 

 July, in summer. It is also possible that some of the fish 

 may spawn somewhat earlier, and others somewhat later than 



