NORTH SEA INVESTIGATIONS. 201 
paper was communicated to the Society, the appearance of Smith’s 
edition of the History of Scandinavian Fishes (Lond., 1893) supplied 
coloured illustrations of both species. The figure of M. abyssorwm 
differs from my own specimens, and from the descriptions given by 
other authors, in that the upper jaw is shown as longer than the 
lower. In all my own specimens, seven in number, the lower jaw 
projects distinctly, but Smith states that the contrary was the case 
in those which had come under his notice. They appear to have 
been of rather smaller size, and there is an indication in my own 
series that the relative length of the lower jaw increases with the 
growth of the fish. This is well known to occur in Gadus virens, in 
which the relative lengths of the jaws in the young are completely 
reversed in the adults, but I do not think it can occur to anything 
like the same extent in the species under discussion. 
My paper, besides dealing at length with the points referred to 
above, gives detailed measurements of all the specimens, and dis- 
cusses the relative antiquity of the two species. My conclusion 
that M. abyssorwm is a specialised offshoot from a form not greatly 
differing from the common ling of the present day is exactly 
opposite to that arrived at by Prof. Smith, who holds M. abyssorwm 
to be “ essentially the predecessor ”’ of the other. ‘To me it appears 
impossible to accept this view without also regarding the typically 
abysmal Gadoids as more primitive than the littoral forms, and such 
an inference seems wholly unsupported by the interpretation which 
the present state of our ignorance permits of the evidence of the 
subject. 
NEW SERIES.—VOL, III, NO. Il, 16 
