The Significance of Kupffer’s Vesicle, with 
Remarks on other Questions of Vertebrate 
Morphology. 
By 
J. T. Cunningham, B.A., 
Fellow of University College Oxford, Superintendent of the Scottish Marine 
Station. 
With Plate I. 
Some time ago I undertook the systematic study of the deve- 
lopment of Teleosteans, because it seemed one of the more 
obscure departments of Vertebrate embryology. I was led to 
devote much attention to the herring, for of marine Teleosteans 
none offers more facilities to the embryologist. 
The researches on which the following discussion is based 
have been carried on since the beginning of last August. My 
first acquaintance with herrings* eggs was made long before 
that time, namely in August, 1883, when I accompanied some 
members of the Scottish Fishery Board on an expedition to 
study the herring question in the Moray Firth. In the 
spring of the present year also, I obtained and artificially 
fertilized herring ova at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. 
But on neither of these occasions had I sufficient opportunities 
to make a study of the subject at all complete. In August of 
the present year I stayed about five weeks at the village of 
North Sunderland, on the Northumbrian coast, and there I 
was able to keep numbers of herring embryos in a healthy 
condition from fertilization up to the time of hatching and for 
ten days after. During the period of their development I 
VOL. XXV. NEW SER. 
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