114 Papers from the Department of Marine Biology. 
The following measurements will help the reader to realize the 
relative sizes of adult breeding females: one was 24.5 inches long over 
all, girth 13 inches; another 23.5 inches long, 13.5 girth; two fish were 
23.5 and 24 inches in length, 13 around; one 22 long by 14 around; 
and greatest of all, 25 inches over all by 19 in circumference. This 
last fish, huge as she was, was not quite ripe, since the eggs would 
not come away when pressure was applied to the abdomen. In such 
a specimen the great distension of the body-walls, due to the swelling 
ovary, tends to thin these down markedly. 
In figure 3, plate 2, we have a poor photograph of the 24.5 individual 
with a girth of 13 inches, as noted above, dissected to show how much 
of the body-cavity of the fish is occupied by the ovary. This organ 
was 7.5 inches long, 9.75 inches at its greatest girth, and, although it 
occupied almost all of the abdominal cavity, was not yet ripe. It 
weighed 435 grams. In front is seen the stomach crowded close up to 
the cardiac region, while posteriorly the much reduced intestine emerges 
from the space between the two lobes of the ovary in which it lies. 
THE OVARY VIEWED EXTERNALLY. 
In figure 1, plate 1, an ovary drawn natural size and viewed from 
the ventral aspect, this organ is seen to consist of two lobes confluent 
behind and leading into a single oviduct opening between the anus 
and the urinary orifice. It is of the normal teleostean type, abnormal 
in size, and in the size of its giant eggs, which may be easily seen 
through the (at this stage) relatively thin walls. This ovary is7.5 
inches in greatest length and 3.5 inches wide, and has one lobe longer 
than the other, as is generally the case. It is from the 24.5-inch female 
with a girth of 13 inches, shown with open abdomen in figure 3, plate 2. 
When drawn, the accidental cut in the ovisac seen in the photograph 
was not represented. 
The ovary is slung to the dorsal wall of the body-cavity by the 
mesovarium, or double layer of peritoneal epithelium. On their 
dorsal surfaces, the 2 lobes of the ovary are, except at their anterior 
ends, closely applied, forming a comparatively flattened surface as 
may be seen in £, figure 8, plate 4. In case the anterior horns of the 
ovary diverge, the peritoneal covering forms a transparent sheet 
stretched dorsally across the space separating them. On the ventral 
surface, however, the lobes curve sharply inwardly and dorsally, leav- 
ing between them a region inverted V-shaped in transverse section. 
Dorsally the ovary is closely applied to the kidneys, and ventrally the 
now much reduced intestine is closely applied to the base of the 
inverted V, between the two lobes of the ovary, tightly held in the 
seam where the peritoneal coats of each ovisac are closely applied. 
As the breeding season approaches, the eggs and their containing 
ovisacs grow larger, more and more filling the cavity of the abdomen 
