654 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vor. XXXIX. 
In other ways there is a difference in sensitiveness in the hag- 
fish, showing in the varying strength of the reaction caused by 
different stimuli. The difference in the two fish with regard to 
the alcohol was one of these. At one time when two healthy 
fish were in the small aquarium, I struck the table on which the 
latter stood with a heavy iron bar, thus giving the aquarium a 
decided jar. The fish responded by tightening up their coils at 
the tail end, and then loosening them again, one fish reacting 
more strongly than the other. I pounded regularly at intervals . 
of about five seconds, and they responded each time, the one 
always in a slightly more marked degree than the other, but the 
responses getting less and less, until at the twelfth blow they 
were no longer given. Half an hour later, when they were 
lying quietly, I tried again. This time they stopped at the eighth 
pound. The next day they were apparently more irritable, for 
they were still responding at the twentieth blow. 
Their movements of defence are interesting. When caught, 
their efforts of escape are purely of the reflex order, trying to 
slip out of what is holding them. They wriggle and squirm to 
get away, throwing out their heads and wrapping their tails 
about one's wrist, but they rarely bite. The tooth plate is a 
formidable weapon, but they seldom use it as such. Of all the 
five hundred and fifty hagfish handled last summer, but few 
snapped, and only one bit. This is in keeping with the experi- 
ence of others who have handled them. 
Their power of reflex action is very strong, and when the 
head is cut off the body wriggles as violently without the head 
as it could with it. It will wriggle of itself for several minutes 
after the head is off, and after it becomes quiet it will respond, 
if touched, for several hours after the beheading, two or three 
hours in any case, and with the younger, smaller fish much 
longer. A fish was stretched out and nailed to a board, and 
injected through the heart with methylene blue. Forty-five 
minutes later the head was cut off, and the body thrown into a 
pan. Two hours after this a second headless body was thrown 
upon it and the first squirmed and tied itself into a knot. 
These reflexes are just as strong in the tail end of the body as 
in the head end. Once in trying to open a hagfish to remove the 
