The Ovary of Felichthys Felis, the Gaff-topsail Catfish. 127 
in two catfishes of the genus Arius from the fresh waters of Guiana. 
His paper, published in 1908, contains a good description of the ovary 
of Arius fissus. His statement is as follows: 
“ Autopsy showed a female (208 mm. in extreme length) with 2 voluminous 
ovisacs moderately elongated and about equal. The left ovisac was about 
50 mm. long, 18 high, and 8 thick. After having been opened it was found 
to contain eggs in three clearly marked-off stages of development. Princi- 
pally, in the posterior region there is found a mass of little rounded ovules, 
more or less ovoidal, grayish-yellow, extremely numerous, and about 0.25 
mm. in diameter. On the ‘face externe et inferiere’ and between the large 
ovules are found some hundreds of medium-sized ovules, more or less ovoidal, 
grayish-yellow, having a large diameter of 1.5 mm. and a small diameter of 
from 1 to 1.5 mm. All the rest of the gland is filled with enormous ovules, 
rounded at maturity, dark green, tightly compressed against one another 
and superimposed in three ranks like the seeds of a pomegranate, to the number 
of a score, and having a diameter of about 6 to 7 mm. The right ovisac 
being exactly similar, there were on the walls some 40 eggs which were deemed 
ready for laying.” 
Last of all, Willey, writing of Boake’s Arius falcarius (boaket) of 
Ceylon, says (1910): 
“The ovaries of an adult female contain a very great number of eggs in 
different stages of growth, but of these only a few become mature at a time 
and there is a great contrast in size between the mature and the immature 
ovarian ova. In one case there were only 10 large eggs in the right ovary and 
8 m the left. In another there were 21 large eggs in the right and 24 in the 
left.” 
For another teleost, but one far removed in time and place from 
Felichthys, Weber (1908) may be quoted concerning A pogon beaufort, 
a Cheilodypterid fish from New Guinea: 
“cc 
: the forward part of whose ovary bore large eggs in long stalked 
follicles, while the hinder part encompassed numberless small eggs, between 
which only here and there a large egg lay. Perhaps it is the rule that only 
a small number of eggs become ripe while the others undergo resorption.’’ 
Bearing on some of the points referred to in the preceding notes, 
Louis Agassiz (1868) may be quoted on the turtles of the Amazon: 
“|'They] always contain several sets of eggs. Those which will be laid this 
year are the largest; those of the following year are next in size; those 
of two years hence still smaller; until we come to eggs so small that it is 
impossible to perceive any difference between their various phases of devel- 
opment.” 
