VIVIPAROUS FISH. 115 
In Cuvier’s ‘Animal Kingdom’ (vol. i. ‘ Fish’), 
all I can glean is that the blenny is viviparous. 
Yarrel, in his ‘ British Fishes,’ speaks of a Mr. 
Low, who put a number of the small fishes (the 
young of the blenny) in a tumbler of sea-water, 
in which they increased in size, but eventually 
died from the want of fresh-water. Again, he 
quotes a Mr. Neil, who saw in the Edinburgh 
market, in 1807, several dozens of young fish es- 
cape alive from the female. ‘The arrangement 
of the perfectly-formed young in the feetal sac of 
the gravid female is very remarkable.’ 
Itis quite clear from the above quotations that 
there is an analogy, if not a close one, between 
the reproductive organs of the blenny and those 
of the viviparous fish from the North-west seas; 
for ‘ the foetal sac of the gravid female’ evidently 
means that there is a kind of placental sac, in 
which the young are contained; but it leaves us 
quite as much in the dark as ever as to how feetal 
life is supported. As the ova deposited in the 
usual way (when fecundated) contains all that 
is requisite for the development of the embryo, 
itis just possible that the same process goes on in 
the womb of the female viviparous fish, and that’ 
the foetal sac is only a wrapper, formed by the 
12 
