of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 195 
found ripe at the size stated. Females probably do not become mature 
as arule until over thirty inches in length, and the facts point to the 
males first reaching maturity when four years of age and the females when 
five years. 
IIT. Foop. 
In carrying on the investigations on board the trawling vessels many 
anglers were opened and the contents of their stomachs observed, and I 
have tabulated the results in the Tables appended. Fish, of course, is 
almost the only food upon which the angler lives, but it was desirable to 
ascertain the proportion of edible and inedible forms and of round-fishes 
and valuable flat-fishes which make up its dietary, and also, if possible, 
to ascertain the amount of destruction caused by this species among the 
food fishes. 
t is obvious from its structure that the angler even in the young stage 
is eminently piscivorous. The gape is very large compared with the size of 
the fish. In one fifteen-and-a-half inches long the width of the mouth was 
four inches, and when opened its vertical diameter was 2? inches ; in one 
measuring forty-three inches the width of the mouth when open was 
nine inches, and the vertical diameter eight inches; in one of 514 inches 
the width of the open mouth was nine-and-three-quarter inches, and the 
vertical diameter nine inches. Such an aperture is obviously capable of 
taking in a very large fish, or numbers of small fish together. In point 
of fact, however, few cases were found in which large fishes had been 
swallowed. The largest found were codling, three of which measured 
23, 20, and 20 inches respectively ; one of the latter was swallowed by 
an angler very little longer, viz. twenty-six inches. The fish containing 
the others were not measured, but the stomachs which were brought 
ashore were very large, and belonged to large anglers. In reality, 
most of the fishes obtained were small, the largest angler not disdaining 
to snap up trifling fishes that come within reach. One of twenty-six 
inches, for instance, had swallowed a sprat and a small whiting. 
In the following Table I have tabulated the results of the examination 
of the stomachs of 541 anglers of various sizes, caught mostly in the 
Moray Firth, Aberdeen Bay, and the deep water off the Shetlands. Of 
these, 261, or 48:2 per cent., were found to be empty, and in many in- 
stances the stomach was shrunken and collapsed, with thick walls, 
probably showing that a considerable interval had elapsed since a meal 
had been obtained. Of the remaining 280, fish, or traces of fish, were 
found in 269, cephalopods alone in ten, and a shore-crab (Carcinus) 
alone in another. In 69 of those containing fish the contents of the 
stomach were pulp, of more or less fluid consistence, in which fragments 
of fish or fish-bones were discovered, and in eighteen instances the fish 
were less digested, but indistinguishable as round or flat fish by ordinary 
means, and they are described as “‘fish-remains.” Of the remainder, 137 
were round-fishes and 58 flat fishes, but a proportion in each case were 
too far digested to enable identification of the species to be made, viz. 
thirty-eight round-fishes and twenty-one flat-fishes. 
Thus, of the fish that could be distinguished, 70°3 per cent. of the 
stomachs contained round-fishes and 29°6 per cent. flat-fishes. Among 
the round-fishes, six, or 4°4 per cent., were codlings; eighteen, or 
131 per cent., were haddocks ; thirty-four, or 24°8 per cent., were whit- 
ings ; three, or 2°2 per cent. were gurnards ; eight, or 5°8 per cent., were 
herrings; two, or 1°5 per cent., were sprats; twenty, or 14°6 per cent., 
were sand-eels ; three, or 2*2 per cent., pogges (Agonus) ; one, or 0'7 per 
