38 REPRODUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT OP THE CONGER. 



In 1833 another specimen of the Leptocephalus Morrisii was 

 described in Loudon's Magazine (vol. vi, p. 530). The observer in 

 this case was Mr. Henry Vietz Deere, of Slapton, Devon, who 

 states that on April 29th, 1833, one of the local fishermen brought 

 to him a small fish apparently dead, which he had carried in his 

 pocket for three hours wrapped in a piece of brown paper. Never- 

 theless, the fish seemed to be alive, and was therefore placed in a 

 tumbler of salt and water, where it lived for some hours. Mr. 

 Deere identified his specimen as the Leptocephalus of Pennant, 

 being unacquainted with other descriptions, and, like Montagu, he 

 proceeds to correct Pallas's description. He says the body was 

 54 inches in length, -^ inch thick, -^ inch deep from back to 

 belly. It was compressed laterally in a remarkable manner, and 

 was pellucid, bright, and silvery. The head was small, 5 inch long, 

 but straight with the line of the back. The dorsal fin did not 

 extend the whole length of the back, as Pennant said, but com- 

 menced 2^ inches from the snout, and the pectoral fins were present, 

 though small. Deere thought the fish to be allied to the launce, 

 Ammodytes tohianns. 



Yarrell's description in his British Fishes, 1st ed., 1836, is based 

 on three specimens which he received from Couch ; he does not add 

 anything essential to previous accounts ; he says it is usually found 

 among seaweed. 



Couch's description in vol. iv of his Fishes of the British Islands, 

 1865, is not very instructive, but he gives a good figure, which was 

 doubtless drawn from one of his own specimens. It is a pity he 

 does not say more about the habits and habitat of the fish. He 

 merely says that its usual residence is in shallow water and rocky 

 ground, but it also inhabits the deeper water. 



Off the shores of England only this one kind of Leptocephalus 

 has been found, but in the Mediterranean several species are defined 

 by Kaup {Apodal Fish, Lend., 1856-8, and On Some New Genera 

 and Species of Fishes, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. vi, 1860). In the 

 latter paper Kaup identifies the L. Spallanzani of Risso's Hist. Nat. 

 de I'Europe Meridionale with the Leptocephalus Morrisii, and says 

 that specimens vary in the development of the teeth, which are 

 sometimes absent, and that in some the tail is longer than the body, 

 in others vice versa. He says that the species is common at 

 Messina, where it lives in the open sea, not in the seaweed, and is 

 caught in bottles by boys when bathing. 



Prof. J. V. Carus was the first, in a pamphlet entitled Ueher die 

 Leptocephaliden, Leipzig, 1861, to suggest that Leptocephalus and 

 allied forms were the larvae of other fishes ; he concluded that 

 Leptocephalus was the larva of Gepola, a genus of rather small, 



