THE DEVELOPMENT 



OF 



SOUTH AFRICAN FISHES. 



PART I. 



BY 



J. D. F. GILCHRIST, M.A., B.Sc, Ph.D., 



Government Biologist to the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. 



The following is a first contribution to our knowledge of 

 the development of a few of the commoner Cape fishes. It is 

 more of the nature of a preliminary report than an exhaustive 

 account, and it would have been well for some reasons to 

 delay publication until time and opportunity were available to 

 go into the matter in more detail. For practical reasons, how- 

 ever, it may be preferable to review the information that has 

 now been procured on some points. These practical reasons 

 are the differences of opinion, involving considerable difficulty 

 in legislative matters, as to the nature of the eggs and spawn of 

 the common fish. Thus it is commonly alleged that the prac- 

 tice of netting, as carried on in the Zwartkops, the Bufifalo, and 

 other tidal rivers of South Africa, has proved destructive to the 

 eggs and spawn of fish, those of this opinion asserting with 

 confidence that quantities of fish spawn are brought on shore 

 by the net and left to perish. Another occasion on which the 

 same question arose was on the commencement of trawling 

 in False Bay, and on the Agulhas Bank, near Mossel 

 Bay by the Government Steamer. It was thought that 

 tl.\e dragging of the net along the bottom of the sea 

 caused the destruction of great quantities of the eggs and 

 young of food fishes. The Cape fishermen, an observant 

 and intelligent class of men, were of opinion that the fish 



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