344 W. F. R. WELDON. 
captivity being rendered useless by the great abundance of 
material procured for me by the fishermen of the Association. 
The gravid females were killed by immersion in a solution of 
corrosive sublimate, warmed to about 50° C., and were after- 
wards treated with increasingly strong alcohol in the usual 
way. The shells were easily removed from the eggs with 
needles; and the eggs themselves were stained, either with 
picrocarmine in the case of those intended for sections, or 
when intended for surface views with Grenacher’s alum- 
carmine. 
The youngest eggs observed were already divided super- 
ficially into four equal segments. The egg at this stage is 
somewhat elliptical, having a long diameter of 0°5 mm., a short 
diameter of 0'4 mm. It is surrounded by a single, delicate, 
transparent shell-membrane, which is, as pointed out by 
Kingsley, completely filled by the living egg. The appearance 
of the hardened egg, after removal of the shell, is seen in 
fig. 1, where the whole surface of each blastomere is seen to 
be crowded with small spherules of yolk. ‘This spherical con- 
dition of the yolk-particles was well retained in all my speci- 
mens, though Kingsley appears to have found that the yolk 
spherules broke up and ran together into masses during the 
process of hardening. The yolk spheres are so densely 
crowded on the surface that the nuclei cannot at this stage be 
rendered visible in the uninjured egg. In sections a single 
nucleus, surrounded by a small mass of protoplasm, is found 
in the centre of each blastomere. The protoplasmic mass 
sends processes into the yolk, which can easily be followed for 
a certain distance; and there can be little doubt that a proto- 
plasmic reticulum extends between the yolk spherules through 
the whole substance of each blastomere. Whether a proto- 
plasmic connection between the adjacent blastomeres is present 
or absent I have been unable to determine. 
It is to be noticed that during the stage with four nuclei 
the segmentation furrows are simple superficial grooves, 
which do not extend to any considerable distance below the 
surface of the egg, so that the great mass of the yolk is as yet 
