408 TEE ZOOLOGIST. 



vibratile cilia. But Ryder* shortly afterwards still more strongly 

 emphasized the function of the thread-bearing eggs by practical 

 researches on those of the Silver Gar (Tylosurus longirostris) 

 and the Atherine, Silver-Sides (Menidia notata), &c, drawing 

 attention to its importance from a sea-fisheries standpoint. He 

 regrets having had no opportunity to study the eggs of the 

 Flying Fish, nor have others, so far as I am aware, essayed to 

 corroborate Haeckel's exposition of the Exoccetal egg type, 

 though Gar-Fish eggs have repeatedly been examined.! Millet t 

 had early shown fish-eggs attached to a barrel-hoop floating near 

 Cape Verde Islands, and Rattray subsequently, when sounding 

 in Gulf of Guinea, found pelagic ova fixed in mass on a tow-net 

 line. Cunningham described and figured these, § and they pretty 

 well substantiate some of Ryder's conclusions. 



Without desire further to weary by detail or reference to 

 side-issues, enough has been said to justify possibility of the 

 Flying Fish's breeding station in mid-ocean. At least, any one 

 who has slowly traversed the Sargasso Sea in a sailing craft can 

 easily understand those waters as most suitable quarters for the 

 breeding and rearing of Exocceti. But again we are confronted 

 by Howard Saunders's || statement of their swarming into the 

 rock-crevices for spawning purposes at the Chincha Islands. 

 Even this can be explained by presence of seaweeds and tangle 

 in the vicinity. According to Saunders, at the above quarters 

 they breed at the end of March. RissoU gives beginning or mid- 

 summer as when full of eggs in the Mediterranean. The Swale 

 specimen may by degrees or in batches have shed its spawn in 

 deep water, say, early in August, prior to its fatal food-forage 

 visit to Kent waters. All the preceding haphazard guesses go 

 to show how much is yet open for interesting observation and 

 needful investigation, equally by the sportsman, the sea-traveller, 

 and the naturalist. 



* ' Bull. U.S. Fish. Cornniis.' i. (1881), p. 283, pi. 19 ; and vol. iii. (1883), 

 p. 195, and woodcuts. 



f Suffice to mention Day, Mcintosh, Masterman, Smitt, &c. 



I In material found by Capt. Freemont, Compt. Bend. 1865, p. 342. 



§ From Rattray's 'Buccaneer' Expedition, see Trans. Boy. Soc. Edinb. 

 sssiii. p. 108, pi. 7, fig. 7. 



|| ' The Zoologist,' 1874, p. 3838. 



*i\ ' Ichthyologie de Nice ' (1810), and ' Hist. Nat. . . . l'Europe Meridionale,' 

 182fl, torn. iii. p. 446. 



