THE OVARY OF FELICHTHYS FELIS, THE GAFF-TOPSAIL 
CATFISH. 
By E. W. GupcEr. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In previous papers (Gudger, 1916, 1918) I have described in some 
detail the natural history of this interesting fish, and especially the 
remarkable habit of the male of carrying in his mouth the eggs until 
they are hatched and the larve until they are capable of fending for 
themselves. In the present paper attention will be called to the 
female and her distinctive organ, the ovary, which is at all seasons an 
interesting structure and at the time of egg-extrusion a most remark- 
able one. Furthermore, the structure of the ovary of the gaff-topsail is 
all the more worth study since practically no investigation has been 
made on this organ in any siluroid, as will be seen when the historical 
portion of this paper is reached. Moreover, there is but one figure 
known of the ovary of a catfish. This will be reproduced and described 
later. 
A large amount of material and data is at hand for a description of 
the ovary of the gaff-topsail. All this was incidentally accumulated 
in the Beaufort (North Carolina) laboratory of the United States 
Bureau of Fisheries, while collecting material and making notes on 
the habits and embryology of this fish; and now that work is being 
done on the ovary, several questions arise to which (unseen before) 
neither material nor notes give answer. 
THE BREEDING FEMALE GAFF-TOPSAIL. 
The ‘‘ripe” female gaff-topsail catfish, 7. e., with eggs ready for 
extrusion or approaching that condition, may be readily recognized, 
for her belly becomes greatly distended. Figure 2, plate 2, shows a 
non-breeding female gaff-topsail and is fairly slender in general outline, 
but unfortunately I have no contrasting figure of a “ripe” breeding 
female, showing the balloon-like expansion of the abdomen. 
The second structure, enabling one easily to recognize the fish ready 
to extrude eggs, is the extremely vascularized, swollen, and protuber- 
ant oviducal orifice. This is an infallible sign of ripeness. Males may 
show a swollen abdomen, due to feeding on fish and crabs, although 
even at the breeding season they do not have such exaggerated genital 
orifices, but in the female this is so much enlarged as almost to 
obscure both the anal and urinary orifices between which it is placed. 
113 
