424 FISHES CHAP. 
Flounders and species of Sebastodes, and it is especially destruc- 
tive to Fishes taken in gill-nets. At Monterey every net in 
the summer contains the empty shells of eviscerated Fishes, and 
when these are taken out of the water the Hag scrambles out 
with great alacrity. Large fishes of even 30 pounds weight are 
often captured without either flesh or viscera, and it cannot be 
supposed that they entered the net in this condition.’ The 
species lives on the sea-bottom most abundantly at a depth of 
10-20 fathoms, but becomes rarer as the water deepens or 
becomes shallower. 
Fic. 241.—A, Cluster of the eggs of Bdellostoma stouti, connected by the interlocking of 
their anchor-shaped filaments ; B, the animal pole of an egg, showing the polar 
‘‘anchors”’ and the opercular ring. (From Bashford Dean. ) 
The eggs of the Californian /dellostoma are large, varying in 
size from 14°3—29 mm. in length, and from 6°8—10°5 mm. in 
width, “and each egg is enclosed in a horny egg-case secreted 
by the epithelium of its ovarian ovisac” (Fig. 241). At each 
pole of the egg-case there is a tuft of numerous horny filaments 
which end in 2- 3- or 4-hooked, anchor-like extremities. In 
the centre of the tuft of filaments at the animal pole of the egg 
the egg-case is perforated by a micropyle, and a little below this 
1 Jordan and Evermann, Bucl. U.S. Nat. Mus. No. 47; The Fishes of North 
and Middle America, Pt. i. 1896, p. 6. 
2 B. Dean, op. cit. p. 230 et seq. 
