22 
half an hour she began to reconnoitre my sham Gorgonia, swam 
round it twice, and then, seemingly satisfied that it would suit her 
purpose, deliberately tried to make a way through the midst of the 
little bush near its root. At this part, however, the sticks of the 
birch broom were stiffer and less yielding than the branches of the 
‘* sea-fan,” or ‘* sea-weed,”’ for which she took them, and she failed 
to drive a heading into them; but, with wonderful intelligence, she 
rose higher and higher, and at last succeeded in separating with her 
nose the upper and more pliant twigs, and forced a passage for 
herself through the brushwood. Resting for a second, she, with 
a quick undulation of the hinder portion of her body, entangled 
the tendrils at the first-presented end of the egg amongst the 
branches, and sailing slowly through and around the upper and 
slighter part of the tree, dragged from her body the tendrils at the 
other end of the egg, and with them another egg, similarly 
furnished. The moment this second egg had passed from the 
orifice, the mother fish gently sank towards the bottom, and 
curling herself into the form of a ring—nose and tail meeting, and 
partially overlapping—encircled the base of the bush, and with 
its stem as an axis, revolved around it fourteen times, winding 
from her body the tendrils of the last-produced end of the second 
egg, as silk is wound from a cocoon, or as a seampstress or tailor, 
in finishing the sewing-on of a button, coils several turns of a 
thread around the needle-stitches by which it is first fixed. As 
soon as this was completed she swam slowly away, and gave no 
further attention to her embryo progeny. I have seen some of 
these eggs left in a tank with several dogfishes for many weeks, but 
the latter take no notice of them, and evidently care neither to 
protect nor injure them. As some present may not have seen the 
egg of the nursehound, I may mention that it has a horny case of 
a yellowish colour, and is in shape something like a butcher's tray, 
or, rather, like two such trays placed together with the convex 
bottoms outwards. It is four and a half inches long, one and a 
half inches broad, and about three quarters of an inch thick in the 
centre. One end is rather rounded off, and I noticed that it is this 
end which issues first from the body of the fish. The other end is 
square across. From the four corners, where the handles of the 
tray would be, are produced horny tendrils, twisted spirally like 
the spring of a bell-wire, but not so tightly, and gradually be- 
coming thinner, until at their ends they are almost as fine as 
cobweb or floss silk. I find that the tendrils at the rounded end 
of the egg of this fish are about three feet in length, and those at 
the square end five feet. The eggs of the roughhound (S. catulus) 
are smaller than those of the nurse-hound, being about two and a 
half inches long. The tendrils of these latter measure, at one 
end, about two feet six inches, and at the other only about twelve 
inches when stretched out. The egg cases are in no way connected 
— 
ae 
PKS Py 
