EEPEODUCTIVE ELEMENTS IN MYXINE GLUTINOSA. 53 



and the number was not inconsiderable. In most of the 

 female specimens which came to hand the large eggs were like 

 cucumbers in shape^ tapering to both ends, but in a few speci- 

 mens the eggs were much thicker in proportion to their length, 

 and not pointed at the ends; these, like the other kind, were 

 arranged in a long series enclosed in the mesoarium, and 

 easily fell out into the body cavity. Lastly, in September, 

 1862, a specimen was found amongst a number sent to the 

 museum, in which some of the eggs not only had the same 

 great thickness and ellipsoidal form, but were surrounded 

 externally by a firmer, almost horny shell which at the ends 

 was provided with a number of slightly curved or S-shaped 

 horny threads. Each thread ends in a head with three or four 

 projecting lobes or hooks, and thus has a certain resemblance 

 to a ship's anchor. The threads remind one of those which 

 project from the eggs of Sharks and Rays, just as the shell itself 

 reminds one of the egg capsule in those forms. The figure 

 here given shows both the appearance of the capsules and also 

 the manner in which they hang in the mesoarium, together 

 with large unripe eggs and a large number of small ones. The 

 eggs provided with threads were entangled by means of these 

 in the edge of the mesoarium, and with one another. Two 

 conclusions may be drawn from this specimen ; one, that the 

 eggs must be destined to be attached by means of their 

 threads to foreign objects or to one another ; and second, that 

 the females hitherto obtained have not been in the last stage 

 of sexual activity. It follows from the last conclusion that the 

 fish's known mode of life as a devourer of carcasses must be 

 short and temporary even for the females, and is perhaps only 

 needful until the eggs have obtained a certain stage of deve- 

 lopment, when the animals probably pass into another mode of 

 existence. 



Steenstrup's account agrees with Thomson's except in two 

 features : first, that the former does not describe or represent a 

 globular ovum inside the capsule, and second, that he figures 

 one end of the capsule, forming about one fifth of the whole, 

 detached as a kind of operculum. With reference to the 



