— 35 - 

 Niinilior Ol' xortehraî in adult Gadus virena 



JOHS. SCHMIDT 



Summary 



Total No. 

 of vertebrae 



No. of 

 specimens 



53. 



54. 

 55. 

 56. 



1 



15 

 26 



3 



the rest, it is only in a small number of cases that it is necessary to have recourse 

 to counting the vertebrae to determine the pelagic young of these three species with 

 certainty. 



§ 2. General features of the occurrence 



The Chart of distribution II, only deals with the months of April May and June (so 

 far as Iceland is concerned, also the first half of July), as later on in the summer prac- 

 tically all the young of the coalfish have ceased to live pelagically; it would therefore give 

 a wrong impression if we included all our negative stations for July, August and Sep- 

 tember. 



In our hauls with the pelagic net at South Iceland and the Faeroes in 1904, I have 

 been able to detect the presence of the eggs of Gadus virens (by hatching them out) in 

 great quantities. The determination of the coalfish eggs by means of hatching has not 

 been carried out to the same extent as for the cod, yet so much can be said that the 

 coalfish eggs were found in the beginning and middle of April 1904, that is, as early as 

 we have anywhere investigated the conditions at Iceland. To judge from everything else 

 also (size of the pelagic young, time when the bottom stages appear etc.), there is no 

 doubt that the coalfish spawns very early in the year, earlier than the cod, haddock and 

 whiting, probably in February, March and April ^ at the Fseroes and Iceland. For the west 

 of Ireland Holt (Survey of Fishing Grounds West Coast of Ireland, p. 399), states his 

 belief that the coalfish chiefly spawns at the beginning of the year, as the females exa- 

 mined in the beginning of April (and later) were spent. Mc Intosh has had fertilised coal- 

 fish eggs from Scottish waters in the middle of February and in April ^. Altogether it 



' I have also found the coalfish eggs round about the Faeroes in May. 

 2 Mi: Jntosh & Masierman (1897, p. 266— 67). 



5* 



