of ths Fishery Board for Scotland. 



285 



a considerable number were taken off Harwich in September, 1868 ; 

 and a few stragglers are still brought in with the herrings at Yarmouth, 

 according to Patterson in the Zoologist for 1897. , 



The Fecundity of the Sprat. 



Observations on the fecundity of the sprat have been apparently 

 rarely made, no doubt from the rarity of ripe sprats among those caught 

 by fishermen, the only statement on the point, as far as I am aware, 

 being in my paper on the Fecundity of Fishes in the Ninth Annual 

 Report of the Fishery Board.* In their work on British Marine Food 

 Fishes, Professor M'Intosh and Mr. Masterman say that " the mature 

 female appears to carry about 5000 or 5400 eggs, more or less," which 

 agrees generally with Avhat is stated in the paper referred to, but it is 

 not mentioned whether their remark is based on my observations or on 

 others of their own confirming it. 



Ripe sprats having been caught in the Moray Firth in the 

 small-meshed net used on board trawlers the opportunity was 

 taken to investigate the point again, the previous observation having 

 been founded on only one specimen, and that not very well preserved. 

 As mentioned elsewhere, it is a striking feature in the ripe sprat that 

 it is impossible to tell from the external appearance that it is ripe. 

 There is no swelling caused by the ovaries or testes as in most other 

 fishes, and on opening the fish the ovaries were found to be very small, 

 although the eggs were mature and nearly mature. The contrast with 

 the ripe herring, for example, is marked, and yet the eggs in the latter 

 are demersal, while most fishes with pelagic eggs have greatly enlarged 

 ovaries and exhibit abdominal tumefaction at the spawning time. It 

 appears, however, that all this is in conformity with the number of 

 eggs spawned by the sprat. The fish which I examined in 1890, 

 referred to above, measured 4^ inches in length, and was found to con- 

 tain about 1404 large eggs, and about 4000 smaller ones ; the ovaries 

 weighing 6 "5 grains. 



The following are the particulars of five females examined. 



The eggs enumerated were those which were large and yolked, but 

 there were many smaller, and in point of fact it would be difiicult to 

 draw a line anywhere between the large and the small, and to say that 

 so many belong to this spawning season and so many to the next. The 

 average number of eggs in these specimens was 2582, the small unyolked 

 being excluded, which is rather greater than the number given for them 

 in the early paper referred to. On the whole, however, on the 

 assumption that the small eggs develop and become matiu-e during the 



* Part III., p. 268. 



