NURSING FISHES. LANCELETS 71 



birth," we know, is meant to carry nourishment from 

 the mother to the young before its birth, but the 

 exact mode in which the young who have no after- 

 birth are nourished had not been clearly demonstrated. 

 However, from some females of the sting-ray, Trygon 

 bleekeri and Myliobatis nietthofii, captured in False 

 Point harbour and further down the coast, in 1888 

 and 1889, I had the satisfaction of showing that, in 

 these species, the young are nourished before birth by 

 a milky secretion that exudes from special glandular 

 filaments growing on the wall of the mother s womb, 

 the milk, as we afterwards proved, being eaten and 

 digested by the foetus. 



Among other interesting species of fish-like animals 

 that we took off the Orissa coast were lancelets of 

 two species. One of these has recently been described 

 by Dr Arthur Willey as a representative of a new 

 genus which, in allusion to its long praeoral lobe, he 

 has named Dolickorkynckus. I had a live specimen 

 of Dolichorhynchus — not then having any idea of its 

 generic distinctness — under the microscope, and observed 

 that the pulsatile sub-branchial vein, which in the 

 lancelets does duty for a heart, contracted at the rate 

 of about six times a minute. 



To sum up my impressions of the Orissa coast, 

 from the zoological point of view : I look upon it as 

 an ideal place for anyone who wishes to study the 

 complete life-histories of the Indian shore-fishes and 



