298 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



though they are comparatively few in number, for it deposits 

 them, as Mr. Holt found at St. Andrews, in holes (such as a 

 large burrow of Pholas crispata), and the parent coils her 

 ribbon-like body around them, after the manner of a Boa. 



Space would fail, however, if the details of those having 

 demersal eggs were entered into at length, for they are 

 numerous, ranging from the Sea- Scorpion {Cottus) with its 

 roseate masses of eggs, the Gobies with their separate eggs fixed 

 by an elegantly reticulated series of strands, the disc-shaped 

 eggs of the Bimaculated Sucker, the globular eggs of the Shanny 

 with their soft adhesive rims ; the golden eggs of the Armed 

 Bull-head, the greenish yellow eggs of the Sand-Eel, and of the 

 curious eggs of the Garfish and Saury Pike, with their external 

 filaments resembling magnified Globigerince surrounded by their 

 protoplasmic filaments. Yet there is one demersal form which 

 cannot be passed by — viz. the Herring (25,000 eggs), which 

 has a small egg with a tough capsule glued to its neighbours, so 

 as to form masses adhering to a gravelly bottom in countless 

 myriads and covering, it may be, square miles. As the Herring 

 is often captured at the spawning season, the eggs adhere to the 

 nets and ropes and form a coating on the deck of the boats, but 

 so hardy and firm are they that after sixteen hours' exposure to the 

 air they are readily hatched. Moreover, it is a curious check to 

 theories concerning the safety of fishes having pelagic eggs to 

 find that here is a fish, the vast multitudes of which surpass 

 every other produced from a demersal egg, and which as time 

 rolls on, and as methods of capture increase in intensity, seems 

 by its undiminished shoals to set man's influence at defiance. 

 Yet its closely related brethren, the Sprat, Pilchard, and 

 Anchovy all have pelagic eggs, and the countless masses of the 

 former sometimes vie with those of the Herring ; indeed, as a 

 fragment of the captures in the Forth, seventeen truckloads have 

 been sent in a day to the Carse of Gowrie to be utilized as 

 manure. Truly the country has not hitherto utilized all its 

 marine sources of food- supply. 



But some fishes exhibit great ingenuity by fashioning nests 

 for the protection of their eggs — such as the 2-, 3-, and 15- 

 spined Sticklebacks — and, moreover, they jealously guard them. 

 The Gourami of the Malay Archipelago (Osphromenus gouramy) 



