JULY. 139 



Among all these forms of beautifully-shaped little ani- 

 mals and I have only mentioned two types so far one 



commonly meets in tow-net gatherings with numbers of 

 very small transparent spherical masses which look like 

 little specks of jelly. We do not know enough about them 

 yet to tell one sort from another, but these are the pelagic 

 eggs of several kinds of fishes. It is a curious device for 

 the dispersal of marine fishes that they should produce 

 such myriads of small eggs, which float up to the surface 

 of the sea and are thus distributed by the ocean currents. 

 Flounders and soles, ling and cod, all produce the same 

 flocitiiig type of egg, and in enormous numbers. A female 

 ling will liberate 10,000,000 eggs in a season, and as ling do 

 not increase suddenly in number, it is safe to assume that 

 011 an average 9,999,999 eggs or young are destroyed for 

 every one which reaches maturity. The young fish after 

 hatching are also pelagic, and it is only after development 

 has proceeded to a considerable extent that they gradually 

 sink to the bottom of the sea and move towards shallow 

 waters. So when the Government closed our Upper Harbour 

 to seine netting they probably did a wise thing, not because 

 flounders and other flat fish spawn in such watei'S, but 

 because the young fish, after they have passed through 

 their pelagic stage and gone down to the bottom of the 

 water, and while still very small in size, find their way 

 into shallow bays and estuaries and there grow to adult 

 size if not disturbed. 



The transparency of most pelagic organisms is no doubt 

 a device to render them all but invisible to their enemies, 

 so that individually they are likely to escape capture. But 

 neither their invisibility nor their minute size are any 

 protection against their absorption in millions by such 

 gigantic animals as the baleen whales, which collect them 

 in vast numbers in their huge filter-like jaws, and indeed 

 live entirely on them. No wonder then that the animals 

 which live their whole life as free-swimmers in the ocean 

 are so enormously abundant, or that those which pass 

 through an early phase of their existence in this form, 

 reproduce in such numbers. In order that they may 



