MODES OF REPRODUCTION 



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young and they collect together around his mouth as though at 

 the word of command, then they disappear within the mouth 

 cavity and he swims quickly away. The author was unable to 

 catch the old fish with the young in its mouth by means of a net, 

 but obtained one specimen in this condition by shooting it in 

 the water ; the young were closely crowded together with their 

 heads directed backwards towards the gills. It is a very wide- 

 spread and ancient belief that the young of the viper seek 

 refuge from danger in their mother's mouth and stomach. 

 Spenser in the " Faerie Queen " in describing Errour under the 

 form of "a monster vile," half-woman and half-serpent, evi- 

 dently thought he was adding a characteristic quite natural to 

 a serpent when in reference to her young ones he wrote the 

 lines : — 



Soone as that uncouth light upon them shone, 



Into her mouth they crept, and suddain all were gone. 



It is curious that science has entirely failed to obtain any 

 confirmation of this popular belief, which must be considered 

 to be entirely without foundation so far as the viper or any 

 reptile is concerned, and on the other hand it is an ascertained 

 fact that at least one kind of fish not only hatches its eggs in 

 its mouth but takes its young into the same cavity when they 

 require protection. 



In Aspredo a genus found in South America, and closely 

 allied to the Siluridae, the eggs after fertilisation become at- 

 tached to the skin of the ventral surface of the female, each egg 

 being borne by a little stalked cup connected with the skin. 

 In the males of the pipe-fishes (Syngnathidae) the eggs are 

 carried by the male during development either in a ventral 

 pouch behind the anus, as in the sea-horse Hippocampus and 

 the common British pipe-fishes Siphonostoma and Syngnathus, 

 or attached to the skin of the abdomen as in Nerophis. In 

 Solenostoma of the Indian Ocean it is the female which carries 

 the eggs in a brood-pouch formed by the pelvic fins. 



Viviparous reproduction occurs in several families of 

 Teleostei, namely the Cyprinodontidae, Embiotocidae, Scor- 

 paenidae, Comephoridae, Blenniidae and Zoarcidae. Of these 

 only the first belongs to the more primitive Teleosteans 

 with open air-bladder, being placed in the sub-order Haplomi, 

 whose best known representative is the pike. The Cyprinodonts, 



