CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ZOOLOGICAL LABORATORY OF THE MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY AT 



HARVARD COLLEGE. NO. 275. 



FORM AND GROWTH IN FISHES 



SELIG HECHT 



ELEVEN FIGURES 



CONTENTS 



I. Introduction 379 



II. Material and methods 380 



III. Weight and length 381 



IV. Body measurements 386 



V. Body measurements and weight 389 



VI. Rate of growth 392 



VII. Form 397 



VIII. Summary 398 



IX. Bibliography 399 



INTRODUCTION 



Organic growth has been defined as an increase in the volume 

 of the Hving material (Morgan, '07, p. 240). And yet, curiously 

 enough, in practically all the work that has been done on the 

 growth of organisms, the weight has been the main consideration 

 (Minot, '08, and Kellicott, '08). The usefulness of an organ 

 and the adaptedness of an organism to its environment are 

 hardly functions of their weight. The form, however, is of 

 prime importance. The data which have been accumulated in 

 the past give practically no information with regard to the rela- 

 tion of form to the rate of growth. 



It has been convenient to study this matter in fishes by corre- 

 lating weight, form, and rate of growth, not only of the entire 

 animal, but of several morphologic divisions of its surface. In 

 an earlier paper Crozier and the writer ('14) established that in 

 the weakfish, Cynocion regalis, weight, length, width, depth, 

 etc., were closely related to one another, and that these relations 

 coulcj be expressed by simple mathematical equations. After 

 a preliminary study of the relation of weight to length in the 



379 



