244, FISHERY PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES. 
found that they would eat almost any animal food, from hard-boiled 
eges to their own fellows, and rapidly gorged themselves, after 
which the majority soon died. 
Among special observations and experiments described in Mr. 
Rathburn’s report we have it stated that Mr. V. N. Edwards has 
studied the spawning and hatching of Pseudo plewronectes americanus, 
the flat-fish or winter flounder, and has discovered that the eggs of 
this species are adhesive and sink in sea water. The best method 
of handling them was found to be to spread them thinly on panes of 
glass and place them in a current of water in the hatching boxes! 
It seems scarcely credible that any species of the Pleuronectidee 
should not have buoyant pelagic ova. But the statements seem to 
leave no room for doubt, as Mr. Edwards is represented as squeezing 
the eggs from the fish and hatching them with facility; it is even 
stated that occasionally adhesion occurs among the eggs in the ovary, 
which when pressure is applied come out in a solid mass. It was 
an unexpected fact that the eggs of the sprat and pilchard are pelagic, 
while those of the herring are adhesive ; and now we have a surprise 
in the opposite direction in the discovery of adhesive eggs in a flat- 
fish. The mere statement, however, requires to be supplemented, 
as doubtless it will be in time, by a description with figures by the 
original observer. Alex. Agassiz and Whitman in 1885 attributed a 
certain pelagic egg to this species, but apparently they were mistaken. 
The eges of Plewronectes maculatus and Paralichthys oblongus were 
obtained at Wood’s Holl by Mr. Edwards, and were buoyant. 
It had generally been believed that the American oyster, Ostrea 
virginica, did not reproduce itself in San Francisco Bay, where large 
numbers of seed or yearling oysters brought over from the Atlantic 
coast are reared for the market. Mr. Townsend, naturalist of the 
steamer “ Albatross,” has, however, found in several parts of the bay, 
Atlantic oysters naturally spatted and derived from parents on the 
planted beds in such conditions—e, g. attached to rocks and piles—as 
left no doubt that they had developed from free spat in situ. Mr. 
Rathbun’s report gives a fuller account of the oyster investigations 
referred to by the Commissioner himself. It is to be hoped that 
the efforts of the Commission will succeed in improving the condition 
of the oyster industry on the Atlantic coast, for the statistical review 
in the Report for 1888, already frequently referred to, shows that a 
serious deterioration had taken place between 1880 and 1888. ‘The 
total decrease in bushels was from 22,195,915 to 21,765,640, made 
up as follows. The production in the New England States had 
increased enormously—more than doubled, in fact ; in the Gulf States 
it was nearly four times as great in 1888 as in 1880, and there was 
also an increase in the Pacific States and in the South Atlantic 
