Sixth Annual Meeting. 



Mr. Wilmot : If our friend had stated that he experimented 

 in this way upon a striped bass, we would have been much more 

 likely to believe his theory. He says it is done in stripes, one 

 stripe made and then the rest. I am under the impression that 

 it is instantaneous ; that the moment the impregnating fluid 

 enters it is instantaneous. It is not in parts, and they coming 

 together afterwards and forming a body, but it is instantaneous. 



Mr. Mather : It may be instantaneous, but I meant, to get 

 any result that you could see. You can tell an impregnated egg 

 long before the fish is perfectly formed, as every one of you are 

 aware ; but with a trout-egg it will take some days — perhaps 

 eight or ten — and then you have got to take a little vial and hold 

 it up in order to see those lines. It is the lines that you see that 

 gives you the idea whether the egg is impregnated or not, and 

 it is so with the shad before you can even see it or be aware 

 of it. 



Mr. Wilmot : I do not mean to say that certain parts do not 

 come together for the purpose of forming the yolk-sac, but I 

 mean to say the substance which gives vitality and life is of that 

 minute form, and gives life instantaneously. That is the 

 argument I hold. 



Mr. Milner : Von Baird, the Russian embryologist, who has 

 within a few weeks died, in making studies of the eggs of fishes, 

 found that on one side of the egg was an orifice which he 

 termed a micropia, and he, under the microscope, in impreg- 

 nating eggs, saw the spermatozoa enter the micropia. Now what 

 the physiological action is nobody knows, but the process, so far 

 as that is concerned, has been followed. They have seen the 

 spermatozoa enter the orifice in the egg. The next stage seems 

 to be, the egg is so constructed that it is formed in concentric 

 spheres. There is the inner yolk, the vitellus, having around it 

 a coat, and then outside of that is the outer coat or shell. After 



