34 
Mr. E. W. L. Holt on the Ova of Gobi us. 
was said by Drury and Fabricius to come from Barbadoes, a 
locality which the recent acquisition of some fine specimens 
to the British Museum collection proves to have been quite 
correct. M. Thomson, however, in redescribing the species 
under the name Phryneta melanoptera , ignored the fact that 
his specimen was ticketed Grenada, and assigned to the species 
the vague locality “ Africa merid.” M. Rene Oberthiir, in 
whose possession Thomson’s collection now is, has, at my 
request, compared Thomson's type of melanoptera wiih 
Drury’s figure and description of verrucosa , and has assured 
me that the two species are undoubtedly identical. The 
species has not, so far as I know, been recorded from Africa, 
except, inaccurately, in the case just cited. Its presence in 
the Antilles can only be explained on the assumption that it 
was at one time transported from Africa. 
In Mr. Fry’s collection I have seen specimens from Trini- 
dad and Barbadoes. 
III. — On the Ova ofGobius. By Ernest W. L. Holt, 
St. Andrews Marine Laboratory. 
[Plate II.] 
On the 13th May, 1890, a dead shell of Lutraria elliptica 
was kindly given to me by Miss Traill, of St. Andrews, who 
had found it the previous day cast ashore on the West Sands, 
and whilst removing the sand with boiling water had detected 
certain foreign bodies adhering to it. This lady subsequently 
gave me two shells of Solen siliqua , collected on the same 
occasion, with similar bodies attached. 
On examining the shell of Lutraria , the two valves of 
which were still united by the ligament, it was found that the 
inner surface of the left valve was entirely covered, save for 
a narrow margin, by a number of little whitish bodies. 
The valves of both the razor-shells were widely open, and 
on the inner surface of the valves in each specimen a sub- 
circular patch of similar bodies (about 2 inches in diameter) 
occurred. 
The whitish bodies, on being submitted to the microscope, 
proved to be the ova of some Teleostean, and, from certain 
peculiarities of structure, are conjectured to be those of a 
goby, probably Gobius minutus , by Professor MHntosh, who 
has kindly asked me to undertake their description. 
The egg is elongated, its long diameter varying from 1*14 
