VIVIPAROUS RAYS 159 



any further additions to her dead weight of raw 

 material. 



On my return to the ship, two months later, I 

 got Captain Hoskyn to maroon me on the shifting 

 spit of sand that forms the eastern boundary of Co- 

 canada Bay, in order that I might collect sharks and 

 rays from the fishermen who at that time used to 

 resort to the spit daily to drag their seines. On this 

 forlorn spot, amid an unbroken waste of muddy waters, 

 where the only sounds that meet the ear, when the 

 fishermen have borne their spoil away, are the ever- 

 lasting thunder of the surf, and the perpetual scream- 

 ing of myriads of gulls, I was able to collect a great 

 deal of the stuff I was looking for, as well as to 

 make some further observations as to the manner in 

 which, in certain viviparous sting-rays, the young are 

 nourished before birth. I found that in the bat-ray 

 {Pteroplatcea micrura) and in the small sting-ray [Try- 

 gon walga) the unborn and developing young ones lie 

 loose and perfectly naked in their mother's womb, 

 where, by means of their spiracles, they imbibe a 

 creamy albuminous fluid, which is secreted by a vast 

 number of small glands temporarily developed in the 

 shaggy lining-membrane of the womb, the series of 

 events being exactly similiar to those described in a 

 previous chapter as occurring in the large sting-ray 

 {Trygon bleekeri), and in the eagle-ray {Myliobatis nieu- 

 hofil). On this occasion, too, I also got a specimen 



