HABITS AND LIFE HISTORY OF THE TOADFISH. IO95 



So far as the writer knows, this fish is never eaten at Beaufort. In July, 

 1908, he had some served at the laboratory mess and, discounting prejudice 

 resulting from the unprepossessing appearance of the fish, its flesh was not only 

 not unpalatable but was distinctly good, as good as or better than the majority 

 of bottom fish caught in the harbor. But however good its flesh, Goode's 

 prophecy for this fish can never be realized, because of the small size of the indi- 

 viduals, the limited numbers in which it is caught, and not least because of the 

 great number of bones due to the presence of the long dorsal and ventral fins." 



LIFE HISTORY. 



The life history properly begins with the formation of the male and female 

 germinative products, the sperm and the egg, but before describing them it 

 will be best to describe the organs of reproduction, the testis and the ovary, 

 respectively, as found in the adult " ripe " fish at the other end of the life history. 



ORGANS OF GENERATION. 



The ovary. — This is fashioned after the ordinary teleostean type, as may be 

 seen in figures i and 2, plate cvii, both of which are natural size. Figure iC is 

 of an unripe ovary which had been preserved in alcohol and photographed in 

 the same. Figure 2 is a ventral view of an ovary excised from a pithed fish 

 and photographed in water alive. Anteriorly it is bifurcated into two lobes, 

 which join behind to form the short oviduct by which the eggs are carried to 

 the exterior through the genital pore opening just behind the anus. In figure i 

 the anus is shown and to the left of it one of the paired halves of the urinary 

 bladder. 



When the eggs are ripe, the ovarian walls are very much distended and semi- 

 transparent, as shown in figure 2, where the large eggs are plainly visible, as are 

 also the small ova — probably of next year's crop — lying between. The fine 

 dark lines running over the ovary are blood vessels with which this organ is 

 abundantly supplied. Extending lengthwise of the left lobe is a strand of 

 tissue which seems to be a raphe. At the anterior end of each lobe are to be 

 seen the remnants of the tissues by which the ovary is tied to the other organs. 

 Internally each lobe is a hollow tube the walls of which are covered with ovarian 

 eggs. 



The ovarian eggs are inclosed each in its own short-stalked follicle, which 

 is richly vascularized. When the process of spawning takes place, the eggs 

 burst the follicles and fall into the lumen of the ovary and thence pass to the 



" Hargreaves (1904), writing of the allied Batrachus surinamensis of British Guiana, says that 

 although its outward appearance is very much against it yet it "has the reputation of being the most 

 delicately flavored fish in the whole colony." 



