of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 



195 



found ripe at the size stated. Females probably do not become mature 

 as a rale until over thirty inches in length, and the facts point to the 

 males first reaching maturity when four years of age and the females when 

 five years. 



III. Food. 



In carrying on the investigations on board the trawling vessels many 

 anglers were opened and the contents of their stomachs observed, and I 

 have tabulated the results in the Tables appended. Fish, of course, is 

 almost the only food upon which the angler lives, but it was desirable to 

 ascertain the proportion of edible and inedible forms and of round-fishes 

 and valuable flat-fishes which make up its dietary, and also, if possible, 

 to ascertain the amount of destruction caused by this species among the 

 food fishes. 



It is obvious from its structure that the angler even in the young stage 

 is eminently piscivorous. The gape is very large compared with the size of 

 the fish. In one fifteen-and-a-half inches long the width of the mouth was 

 four inches, and when opened its vertical diameter was 2| inches; in one 

 measuring forty-three inches the width of the mouth when open was 

 nine inches, and the vertical diameter eight inches; in one of 51| inches 

 the width of the open mouth was nine-and-three-quarter inches, and the 

 vertical diameter nine inches. Such an aperture is obviously capable of 

 taking in a very large fish, or numbers of small fish together. In point 

 of fact, however, few cases were found in which large fishes had been 

 swallowed. The largest found were codling, three of which measured 

 23, 20, and 20 inches respectively ; one of the latter was swallowed by 

 an angler very little longer, viz. twenty-six inches. The fish containing 

 the others were not measured, but the stomachs which were brought 

 ashore were very large, and belonged to large anglers. In reality, 

 most of the fishes obtained were small, the largest angler not disdaining 

 to snap up trifling fishes that come within reach. One of twenty-six 

 inches, for instance, had swallowed a sprat and a small whiting. 



In the following Table I have tabulated the results of the examination 

 of the stomachs of 541 anglers of various sizes, caught mostly in the 

 Moray Firth, Aberdeen Bay, and the deep water off the Shetlands. Of 

 these, 261, or 4 8 "2 per cent., were found to be empty, and in many in- 

 stances the stomach was shrunken and collapsed, with thick walls, 

 probably showing that a considerable interval had elapsed since a meal 

 had been obtained. Of the remaining 280, fish, or traces of fish, were 

 found in 269, cephalopods alone in ten, and a shore-crab (Carcinus) 

 alone in another. In 69 of those containing fish the contents of the 

 stomach were pulp, of more or less fluid consistence, in which fragments 

 of fish or fish-bones were discovered, and in eighteen instances the fish 

 were less digested, but indistinguishable as round or flat fish by ordinary 

 means, and they are described as " fish -remains." Of the remainder, 137 

 were round- fishes and 58 flat fishes, but a proportion in each case were 

 too far digested to enable identification of the species to be made, viz. 

 thirty-eight round-fishes and twenty-one flat-fishes. 



Thus, of the fish that could be distinguished, 70-3 per cent, of the 

 stomachs contained round-fishes and 29'6 per cent, flat-fishes. Among 

 the round-fishes, six, or 4*4 per ceut,, were codlings; eighteen, or 

 13-1 per cent., were haddocks ; thirty-four, or 24*8 per cent., were whit- 

 ings ; three, or 2*2 per cent, were gurnards ; eight, or 5'8 per cent., were 

 herrings; two, or 1*5 per cent., were sprats; twenty, or 14*6 per cent., 

 \^'ere sand-eels; three, or 2*2 per cent., pogges (Agonus) ; one, or 0-7 per 



