614 



ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN" INSTITUTION, 1908. 



The spheroidal masses of seaweed continued to be credited to the 

 Pterophryne by the latest and best icthyologists. Bridge and Bou- 

 lenger, in the volume on fishes of the Cambridge Natural History 

 (vol. 7, 1904), accepted the old story as an established fact. But at 

 last it turned out that the whole oft-repeated story was baseless, so 

 far as the Pterophryne was concerned, and that it arose simply from 

 misidentification of the eggs found in the sargasso mass." 



In 1905, as already remarked, there was a drift of sargasso weed 

 with many individuals of the Pterophryne histrio along the eastern 

 American coast. In August, Dr. Hugh Smith, the Deputy United 

 States Fish Commissioner, informed the writer that he had received 

 eggs of the fish and extended an invitation to examine them. The 



eggs and the data connected with 

 them proved that the mode of oviposi- 

 tion of the Pterophryne was similar 

 to that of the common angler. Con- 

 sequently Pterophryne could not have 

 been the maker of the nestlike masses 

 ascribed to it. The writer had re- 

 centl}^ acquainted himself with the 

 habits and oviposition of the flying 

 fishes and, with the knowledge of 

 vv'hat the eggs of Pterophryne really 

 were, had no hesitation in declaring 

 that the eggs described by Mobius in 

 connection wdth the spheroidal masses 

 of sargassum were in truth those of 

 a flying fish. Further, the flying fish 

 could have taken no part in making 

 a nest and the form of the mass was 

 simply the result of the automatic ac- 

 tion of the polar filaments. 



The alleged nest of Pterophryne 

 was for the first time illustrated as a whole by Dr. Alexander Agassiz 

 by an excellent and artistic figure published in 1888 in his Three 

 cruises of the Blake.^ He naturally assumed that the previous iden- 



°The details of this discovery may be found in Science, viz, Gill, Theodore, 

 The Sargasso fish not a nest-maker, Dec. 22, 1905, p. 841; Gudger, E. W., A 

 note on the eggs and egg-laying of Pterophryne histrio, the Gulf-weed fish, 

 Dec. 22, 1905, p. 841-843; Gill, Theodore, The work of Pterophryne and the 

 Flying-fishes, Jan. 11, 1907, p. 63; Smith, Hugh, Supplementary Remarks, pp. 

 63-64. See also Smithsonian Report for 1905, 1907, pp. 407-408, where illustra- 

 tion of " nest " by A. Agassiz is given. 



* Agassiz, Alexander. A Contribution to American Thalassography. — Three 

 cruises of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Steamer " Blake," 

 [etc.], from 1877 to 1880. Boston and New York, 1888, (Fig. of " uest," vol. 2, 

 p. 31.) 



Fig. 48. — Egg of Flying fish errone- 

 ously attributed to Pterophryne, 

 enlarged .30 times. After Mobius. 



