GILL] LIFE HISTORIES OF TOADFISHES 421 
scattered over the upper hemisphere of the yolk, and lie between it 
and the vitelline membrane. They vary in size from .12 to .03 
millim. The oil-globules cause the egg to float with the germinal 
disk downwards, so that the embryo is developed on its back, so 
to speak, and it is not till some time after hatching that the young 
fish is enabled to swin with the ventral surface downwards.” 
In a very few hours after extrusion the fertilized eggs show the 
evidence of segmentation. About 9 o’clock (A. Mm.) “the first two 
cells are formed.”’ Development rapidly goes on and sometimes as 
early as the eighth day after emission, and thence to the eleventh 
day (the time depends on the temperature), the young are hatched 
out and begin life as free larve. 
A “recent hatched larva,” according to E. W. Holt, M’ oe and 
Masterman, is nearly a seventh of an inch (‘‘ 3.27 mm.’’) long and, 
with its prominent yolk, reminds one of a tadpole. The mouth is 
“only indicated by a slight depression in the newly hatched embryo.” 
The eggs of the greater weever have a diameter of from less than 
a millimeter (0.96) to considerably more (1.11) and only a single 
large oil-globule; they are “perfectly transparent.” At “about 120 
hours after fertilization (temperature of the water ranging from 
15° to 70° C.) the embryos were hatched”’ and with a slight increase 
of temperature the hatching was accelerated to 110 hours. 
According to Boeke, “immediately after hatching the buoyancy 
of the yolk-sac causes the little larvze to float helplessly in the water, 
the yolk-sac uppermost, but very soon they are able to keep them- 
selves in the normal position and swim about actively when dis- 
turbed. At rest they hang with the front end inclined downwards, 
as is also the habit in other very young fishes under these conditions. 
The oil-globule has now taken a position at the foremost part of the 
yolk-sac. The larve are still perfectly transparent, and but for the 
strongly marked black spots are difficult to see. . . . At about 
four or five days after hatching the yolk has almost entirely dis- 
appeared and the larve die.” Consequently neither Boeke nor 
others have succeeded in tracing the early post-larval history of the 
species. 
A kind of homceopathic remedy is resorted to by some to avert the 
evil effects of wounds inflicted by a weever. “In Bohuslan, says 
Fries, it is held to be a sovereign remedy to cut open the belly of 
the fish that has caused the wound, take out the liver and at once 
make the patient eat it. This remedy, strange as it may appear,” 
adds Smitt, “is never omitted’?! An analogous antidote was also 
found in the fish’s brain. ‘In the words of A. Saville Kent (1883) 
