SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 309 



ICHTHYOLOGUCAL NOTES. 

 Jas. Johnstone. 



(1) An hermaphrodite hake. 



In June last, Mr. W. Wright, a fisherman who had 

 attended the classes at Piel in 1905, recognised that a 

 hake which he was gntting on hoard a steam trawler, 

 fishing off the West Coast of Ireland, was possessed of 

 hermaphrodite organs. The viscera were, therefore, 

 preserved in some spirituous liquid and handed to Capt. 

 Wignall, who sent the specimen to me. In the course 

 of dissection, which is always a much more rapid process 

 on a steam trawler than in a laboratory, the viscera had 

 suffered considerably, and the relations of the genital 

 ducts, urocyst, and alimentary canal were not at all clear 

 in the specimen when it reached me. Nevertheless, 

 there is no doubt that the organs are those of a 

 hermaphrodite hake. 



Both ovaries are present. That on one side is 

 5*5 x 3*25 cm. in diameter; that on the other side being 

 6'5 x 3*5 cms. in the corresponding dimensions. They 

 are apparently normal organs, hard, and crowded with 

 small ova, and not dissimilar in structure and stage of 

 ripeness to the ovaries of a normal hake at the same 

 stage of development and at the same period of the year. 

 The ova are about 0*8 mm. in diameter. 



At the posterior end of each ovary is a testis. These 

 organs have the shape and appearance characteristic of 

 a well-developed gadoid testis. They are apparently 

 incomplete so I do not give their dimensions. Both are 

 equally well developed, and each is larger than the ovary 

 to which it is attached. They are convoluted in the 

 usual manner though the convolutions are not so 



