298 LOCH CRERAN. 



dish was alive with little gelatinous, huge-eyed fellows 

 from both swarms ; while before we reached home not 

 half-a-dozen eggs remained out of the two lumps of 

 spawn. Only two or three were nonfertilised or dead. 

 This seemed the more remarkable to us, as the deposits 

 were apparently of very different ages ; at least, the one 

 lot had separated widely apart, as the eggs gradually do 

 before incubating, while the other had not apparently 

 made any advance towards seeking greater elbow-room. 

 There seems little question that warmth has a remarkable 

 effect in facilitating the incubation of the ova of seafishes. 

 The quaint cases of the dogfish are twined among the 

 seaware along this boulder-clad spit of beach, and we 

 note that several of them have already been penetrated 

 and the contents devoured. The holes were neatly 

 punctured, as we had previously observed in the case of 

 the similarly-constituted tough skate eggs. Splashing 

 across to the exposed boulders further seaward, we set 

 down our various receptacles and look around. Our 

 eyes are for a time distracted by here a rock oyster 

 under the shadow of a stone, there one dragged from the 

 farther deep by the tangle fronds that are clinging to it 

 by their roots now there is a big fellow skulking under 

 the black ware, lying so flat that it looks like a splash of 

 lime, while on turning over this heavy stone another is 

 discovered firmly attached to the bottom thereof. 

 Whew ! you are too late, my friend, so you can wait till 

 we return from this rich crimson object over here. The 

 crimson object proves to be a mass of beautiful ova, 

 presumably of the "lump sucker," or cock and hen 

 paidle. 



So we return to our chance acquaintance of a minute 

 since, who has stuck his nose between two stones and 



