240 
VIVIPAKOUS BLENNY. 
The males are much less in numher than the females, and 
are also of inferior size; but they are not otherwise to be 
distinguished, except when the females are distended with the 
young. Willoughby supposes the season of fertility to be 
about the spring equinox, but according to Nilsson it is through 
the year; at which time the grains of spawn are very small, 
firm, and of a whitish colour; and they are seen to be con- 
tained in a hag which before had appeared empty. In a little 
more than a month these grains have increased in size, and 
are become of a reddish colour; they become more soft when 
as large as a grain of mustard seed, and then they assume a 
lengthened shape, with a couple of dark specks where the eyes 
are to be. The thread also is visible by which the nourishment 
is conveyed into the bowel; and finally the tail is seen, but not 
thicker than a very slender thread, and it appears bent at its 
termination. With the growth of the young the belly of the 
parent becomes more and more distended, but not solely from 
their increasing bulk; for what contributes to it is a tenacious 
fluid with which each ovum is supplied, and by which (and 
an attendant bed of soft fibres) the soft and tender substance 
of each young one is kept from pressing on and injuring the 
structure of the others. The thick and tenacious fluid in which 
the young ones float diminishes as their growth increases, and 
it altogether disappears about the time when they are to be 
produced to light, no doubt by absorption into the body, the 
number at one birth having been known to amount to three 
hundred. This would appear, however, to be the extreme limit 
of their number, since Nilsson says that in a fish which measured 
a foot in length, it amounted to one hundred and ninety-five, 
and in one of thirteen inches to two hundred and sixty-two. 
It breeds at an early age, since a fish which measured only 
six inches has been known to contain roe; but the number 
produced, and their size, have been observed to vary with the 
bulk and consequent age of the parent; so that the example 
from which our figure and description were taken, and which 
was a little beyond ten inches long, produced only seventy, 
while in some of the largest size the young ones in this first 
stage of their existence, measured between four and five inches, 
and so perfect are they at their first entrance into life, that 
they are immediately able to put forth all the activity of exis- 
