No. 523] NOTES ON BEAUFORT FISHES 401 



ton, N. J., took a specimen inside the hook of Cape Look- 

 out. Of this, however, no measurements wore made. 



Considerable numbers of sting and butterfly rays, 

 Dasyatis say and Pteroplatea maclura, were taken at the 

 Narrows. The females of these were commonly found to 

 have gravid uteri. At the beginning of my season's 

 seining, the eggs had on them young in very early stages 

 not longer than 10-12 millimeters, the "selachian stages" 

 of Alcock. Two eggs were found having what seemed to 

 be membranous egg shells like those found on teleost 

 ova, and one had the ends twisted into chalaza-like struc- 

 tures similar to those in a hen's egg. Alcock seems to 

 have found similar structures in Carcharias mdano-p- 

 terus, a viviparous shark of the Indian Ocean. He 



Those uteri, which contained embryos having the yolk 

 sac gone or reduced to a mere string, had their whole 

 inner surface crowded with villi, shaggy with them. Both 

 the villi and the deeper layers of the uteri were tremen- 

 dously vascularized, and the whole uterus' in any speci- 

 men was greatly distended by this unwonted blood sup- 

 ply. Uteri containing young as above described were 

 filled with and had the young bathed in a milky fluid evi- 

 dently secreted by the villi (in the absence of a placenta) 

 as nourishment for the embryos until the time of hatch- 

 ing. According to Alcock 7 this "milk" is taken through 

 the open spiracles of the Indian Ptcroplafia micrura, a 

 closely allied form, into the mouth, stomach and intestine. 

 Since the Beaufort species likewise have the spiracles 

 wide open, it is fair to suppose that they too feed in the 



