408 PARENTAL CAKE AMONG FRESH-WATER FISHES. 



did not discredit the earlier identification." In 1905, however, Dr. 

 E. W. Gudger and Dr. Hugh Sr.iith both caught females of Ptero- 

 'phryne in the act of emission of Qg,^ rafts like that of the angler. 

 Of course the parent of such eggs and egg rafts could not be the maker 

 of the nests attributed to the FteropJirifne. What fish, then, was the 

 maker of the nests? The only eggs like those found in the nests 

 are those of some flying fishes (Exoccetids). We are forced, there- 

 fore, to assume that a flying fish had laid her eggs on a frond of the 

 sargassum, and tliat they had l)een fertilized by the male. These 

 eggs have bipolar bunches of very long filamentary tendrils, and 

 such have mechanically grasped and brought together the finely 

 divided branches of the sargassum, with the result that subglobular 

 masses have been formed in which the eggs are protected. They 



Fig. 1. — Alleged nest of Ptcrophryne. After A. Agassiz. 



answer every })urpose of a nest, but are they nests? If so considered 

 we nnist admit that the eggs and not the fish make a nest! 



Some of the fishes to be noticed in the following pages have the 

 males gaudily colored and larger than the females. The relations of 

 the sexes to each other with regard to color and size are noteworthy, 

 inasmuch as they have been generally misunderstood. One eminent 

 ichthyologist (Doctor Giintlier). in an " Introduction to the study of 

 fishes" (p. 050), dogmatically declared that '"with regard to size, 

 it appears that in aU teleosteous fishes the female is larger than the 

 male," and Darwin was assured by him that he did " not know a sin- 



a As Professor Agassiz dirt not notice any filaments on his e.iiSf^, I tlion.irht 

 it possible that some real eggs of a Ptcrophryne may have drifted on the out- 

 side of an egg mass, but Doctor Agassiz kindly sent me a couple of eggs from 

 the outside and they jiroved to have bipolar filaments and consequently to 

 be eggs of liying fishes. 



