328 Fish Stories 



purpose of studying its structure and development. It lays 

 its large egg, inclosed in a flattish egg-case, on the bottom of 

 the sea. To each end of the egg are attached barbed threads 

 which serve to anchor the eggs to the bottom of the sea. 

 Curiously enough, the male fish at once proceeds to devour 

 these eggs wherever he can find them. For a long time all 

 the eggs which were secured were found in the stomachs of 

 the male fish. 



The hagfish is the only fish which lives wholly as a par- 

 asite. It fastens itself to the throat or eye or other soft 

 place of a large fish ; with the knife-like hooked teeth on its 

 tongue it rasps a hole into the muscles of the fish. It then 

 proceeds to devour the great lateral muscles which consti- 

 tute the great part of the flesh of the fish, always avoiding 

 the nerves and never breaking through into the body cavity 

 itself. I have seen large fishes still alive with half their 

 weight gone, living husks, floating about in the sea. When 

 one of these husks is lifted from the water, the hagfishes 

 inside of it slip out almost instantly and hide themselves 

 in the sea. The hagfishes are especially likely to attack 

 fishes held in the gill nets, and in this way they do consider- 

 able injury. 



They were hated of the fishermen until Pacific Grove was 

 made the seat of a scientific station, and scientific men as 

 George Clinton Price, Bashford Dean, Franz Doflein and 

 Howard Ayres, ready to pay more for these slimy, repulsive 

 creatures than good fishes are worth. Now the pursuit of 

 the hagfish at Pacific Grove has become something of an 

 industry of itself. 



The California hagfish is plum-color or purplish, and on 

 the sides of its neck it has about ten gill holes, instead of 

 seven, found in lampreys. Other hagfishes, similar in char- 

 acter, are found in Chili, Japan and New Zealand. At 

 the present time there is a beautiful pink hagfish in the 

 Avalon Aquarium. 



The present species was named by Lockington in 1879, 



