340 



MARKETABLE BRITISH MARINE FISHES 



cicntly clear, that the roe forms a very long tube which is coiled 

 up inside the mother, and if we infer that the eggs are attached, 

 before they are quite ripe, by their stalks, we can understand how 

 they could become connected together by their sticky sides, and 

 so form the ribbon-shaped sheet of a single layer of eggs which 

 we know to be the condition in which they are shed into the 

 water. The existence of the stalks holding the eggs in the roe 

 until they have become attached together by their sides, explains 

 why they stick together in a single layer, and not in a mass. It 



FIG. 148. Three of the eggs of the Angler, from a sheet of the spawn, alive and 

 magnified ; after Agassiz. 



is at any rate clear that the sheet of jelly containing the eggs is 

 simply formed of egg-membranes corresponding to those in 

 which other fish eggs are enclosed. 



Each egg has a single large oil globule which, when the fish 

 develops, is situated at the hinder end of the yolk-sac : the yolk 

 is undivided. 



It is characteristic of the larva, even before it leaves the egg, 

 that it develops a large amount of black pigment, although the 

 yolk and the substance of the body are quite transparent. The 



