OVARY AND OVARIAN OVA IN CERTAIN MARINE FISHES. 155 



The condition of the yolk in the conger's egg resembles that 

 of nearly ripe pelagic eggs, and there is nothing in it to indicate 

 that the yolk spherules might not fuse together more or less 

 completely, and so give rise to the condition of a pelagic egg 

 with one or more oil globules. But there is a third possibility, 

 that the ripe egg is neither pelagic nor adhesive, but remains 

 unattached on or near the bottom. 



My preparations of the ovaries of conger do not supply any 

 evidence of great importance concerning the more minute 

 features in the structure of the ovum which I have discussed 

 in connection with other species. They were not made for the 

 purpose of minute investigation, and the material was fixed in 

 either corrosive sublimate or Perenyi's mixture. I have not 

 been able to trace in them the vitelline nucleus, and although the 

 nuclear network is visible in the younger stages, in eggs up to 

 a diameter of '27 mm., I have only seen a faint trace of fibrils 

 in the nearly ripe eggs. The presence of one, or occasionally 

 two nucleoli of very great size is noticeable in the younger 

 eggs up to the size just mentioned. In an ovum of that 

 diameter I found that the large nucleolus measured '03 mm. 

 There are in addition very numerous small peripheral nu- 

 cleoli. 



The history of the ovary in the eel is very similar to that in 

 the conger. I have not examined the earlier condition in very 

 young eelsj but I have preparations showing the fatty stage 

 from a specimen 1 ft. 11 1 in. long, killed in June. The ova 

 in these sections do not exceed '13 mm. in diameter, and they 

 are surrounded by fat-cells, as in the conger ovary represented 

 in fig. 32. On the other hand, in sections from the ovary of 

 an eel 1 ft. 9| in. long, killed on November 15th, the largest 

 ova reach '2 mm., and there is no fat. One of the ova in 

 these sections is represented in fig. 34. As shown in the 

 figure, the cytoplasm contains numerous oil globules, but no 

 yolk. 



The testes of the conger, like the ovaries, also at a certain 

 stage consist in large proportion of adipose tissue, in which 

 small islands of germ-cells are scattered. As in the case of 



