CRANQON VULGAEIS. 103 



ers every nucleus was placed in the drawing with that in- 

 strument. 



THE EGO. 



The eggs are laid at Salem from the middle of June un- 

 til the latter part of July. The method in which they are 

 attached to the pleopoda calls for no special remark. They 

 are placed in a single row in long, apparently structure- 

 less tubes which may frequently be untangled and straight- 

 ened out, when they present a mouiliform appearance. 

 The eggs themselves vary slightly in size ; some are nearly 

 spherical but the majority are ovoidal and have a major axis 

 of .024 and a minor one of .018 inch. As I have not been 

 fortunate enough to see the ovipositiou, I cannot say 

 whether, at the time of laying, the nucleus (apparently) dis- 

 appears. In the earliest stage I have seen (Fig. 1), it was 

 present, and the egg presented but slight difference from 

 the later ovarian egg. The egg is enveloped in a very thin 

 structureless envelope, inside of which I have found no 

 traces of an inner orvitelline membrane, nor is there any 

 space between the shell and the yolk. The protoplasm 

 occupies a central position ; it is not regular in outline, but 

 gives off pseudopodal prolongations which ramify and pass 

 between the yolk spherules in all directions. Whether 

 these anastomose in their finer filaments or not, I am un- 

 able to say. I have not seen any such unions in the larger 

 branches. The protoplasm is granular, the granules ap- 

 parently taking a deeper stain than the rest, though this 

 appearance may be due to a different refractive index. The 

 nucleus is large and vacuolated, and in its interior is a well 

 developed chromatin reticulum which traverses it in all 

 directions, the fibres uniting on the wall of the nucleus in a 

 thickened layer. Whether this reticulum is formed from 

 one or from several filaments, my lenses and preparations 



