60 AmeiHcan Fisheries Society 



FLOATING FISH EGGS SURVIVE SOME PECULIAR CONDITIONS. 



But curiously enough these delicate eggs will resist 

 some most unfavorable environments. I have seen a 

 stone jar with cheese cloth over the top, filled with cod 

 eggs floating in sea water and arriving after a long jour- 

 ney of several hundred miles in fine living condition, 

 though a strong putrid odor was perceptible and the 

 water was foul with decayed animal matters. 



I have kept floating eggs in watch glasses or shallow 

 glass dishes, and they lived and hatched out, and the 

 young larval fish survived for some days, though the 

 water was becoming more saline daily through evapora- 

 tion. Professor Mcintosh, long ago, told of an experi- 

 ment with floating eggs in a test-tube which he heated 

 until the contents were almost boiling, and he laid the 

 tube aside only to find accidentally, a few days later, 

 that the young larval fish were actually swimming about. 



PELAGIC FISH LARVAE AND CRUSTACEA DEVOUR EACH OTHER. 



There is no doubt that fish eggs form a part of the 

 food of many vertebrates and invertebrates in the sea. 



The older fish often gorge themselves with eggs and 

 fry; but as Professor Fabre Domergue of the Con- 

 carneau Laboratory has said, in his beautiful monograph 

 (Development de la Sole, Paris, 1905), the young fish, 

 after the yolk has grown, become most active hunters 

 after other fish and attack even larger larvae than them- 

 selves. At first the victim may escape, but after many 

 repeated attacks, they rarely miss their prey. The vic- 

 tim, as bulky and as long as the hunter, cannot be 

 swallowed at a single gulp, but one sees the tail wag- 

 ging actively as it protrudes from the mouth, and so 

 transparent are the fish that the victim can be seen 

 passing into the gullet and then into the stomach. "Total 

 deglutition," says Fabre Domergue, "may last more than 

 an hour, and one may constantly have passing under 

 one's eyes, undeniable proof of their appetite for the 

 tail of the victim protudes more or less from the jaws. 

 It can be best described as giving the impression that 



