18 REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OP THE CONGER. 



meut of my own observations concerning the male conger. The most 

 convenient publication to start from in this inquiry is Hermes' paper 

 already mentioned. The principal subject of this paper was the 

 discovery of ripe testes full of ripe actively motile spermatozoa in a 

 specimen of the conger. The specimen was one of a number caught 

 near Havre^ and sent to the Berlin Aquarium in the autumn of 1879. 

 These specimens when they arrived were 60 to 70 cm. long (2 feet 

 to 2 feet 4 inches). They all throve in the aquarium and grew 

 rapidly with the exception of one, which increased very little in size, 

 and which died on June 20th, 1880. It was then 74 cm. (293I0 inches) 

 in length. When this specimen was opened organs were seen in it 

 which looked like ripe testes, and when a cut was made in one of 

 these milt flowed from the incision ; this milt was found on exami- 

 nation under the microscope to be swarming with actively moving 

 spermatozoa. 



The form and size of the ripe testes are carefully described by 

 Hermes. Each was an elongated laterally compressed mass fastened 

 at the side of the air-bladder by a suspending membrane. The 

 greatest breadth of the organ was 18 mm. (-j^ths inch), its greatest 

 thickness from side to side 9 mm. ("36 inch). Each organ extended 

 through nearly the whole length of the body-cavity, commencing 

 near its anterior end and continuing some distance behind the anus. 

 A number of transverse fissures divided each organ into several 

 lobes, namely five in the right organ, and about the same number 

 in the left. At the base of each organ was a closed duct or vas 

 deferens through which the milt was conveyed to the exterior. 

 Opposite the rectum a downward branch passed from each vas de- 

 ferens, and these two branches united to open by a single aperture 

 behind the anus to the exterior. Hermes points out that the testes 

 of the conger discovered by him, correspond, when allowance is made 

 for the fact that they were ripe and fully developed, very perfectly 

 with the lobed organs of the common eel described by Syrski in 1874. 

 He concludes, therefoi-e, that Syrski' s organ is, as that author be- 

 lieved, the testis of the male eel. The conger further agrees with 

 the common eel in the relation of the size of the male to that of the 

 female, Syrski having found that the male eel was considerably 

 smaller than the female. 



Dr. Syrski,"^ while holding the post of Director of the Museum 

 of Natural Sciences of Tries! , was commissioned by the authorities 

 of that town to ascertain the spawning season of the fishes of the 

 neighbourhood. He included the eel in his researches, and con- 



* My knowledge of the investigations of Syrski and Jacoby is derived from a transla- 

 tion of Jacoby's work on The Eel Question, in the Report of the TT^S. Commissioner of 

 Fisheries for 1879. Washington, 1882 



