222 Toe Ottawa NATURALIST. . [March 
naturally. He took them from the parent fish before they were 
deposited, and while he obtained and described the egg and pub- 
lished a drawing of it, no one could say if the features described 
were normal or not, and it was not possible to say whether or not 
it possessed buoyancy, and belonged to the pelagic type of ovum. 
Van Bambeke’s account described the egg of the burbot as an 
extremely small, spherical, translucent ovum, with a pale greenish 
oil globule, surrounded by a thin coat of protoplasm, the globule 
being held in a fixed situation, in the yolk matter, by a column, 
or thick strand, of tenacious protoplasmic material. How does 
this description compare with the features of the eggs, several 
hundreds of which were deposited, at the end of January, by the 
parent fish in the Ottawa Fisheries Museum and examined under 
moderate powers of the microscope? A study of these eggs 
yielded this remarkable result, that they have all the features of 
the typical pelagic eggs which occur abundantly in the ocean 
where cod, sea-ling and other Gadoids spawn. The burbot’s egg 
is somewhat buoyant, of minute size, extremely transparent, and 
delicate in structure. As Van Bambeke stated, there is a single 
large oil-globule, greenish in hue, though almost colorless in trans- 
mitted light, but not fixed or held in place by a strand of proto- 
plasm. Now, the burbot is a close relative of the sea-ling ( Molva 
vulgaris) and of the sea-cusk (Brosmius brosme, Muller), and 
_ bears a strong external resemblance to them, having an elongated 
eel-like body, a flattened head, a small first dorsal fin, and a very 
long second dorsal and anal fin, as well as a rounded spatulate 
tail. The sea-ling and sea-cusk produce small pe agic eggs, each 
of which contains a single large bright oil-globule, that in the 
ling’s egg pale greenish ; that in the sea-cusk’s egg being terra- 
cotta in tint. The egg of the fresh-water ling almest exactly 
resembles the ovum of its marine relative in all essential features. 
The ova of the marine ling (Molva vulgaris), to quote from the 
large Scottish monograph (the most elaborate account of fishes’ 
eges ever published),* ‘‘are less buoyant than some other 
Gadoids, e.g., Gadus morrhua and G. eglefinus, and sometimes, 
though living, sink to the bottom in quiescent water, yet success- 
* Professors McIntosh and Prince, Trans. Roy. Soc., of Edinburgh, 
Vol. xxxv, Pt. iti, No. 19, p. 668. 
ee ee a eee Se ae ee, ee ee 
