FIG. 85.—Capelin, _Mallotus villosus_ L. Crosswater Bay. ] This species spawns in the surf, and the writer has seen them in August cast on the shores of the Alaskan islands (as at Metlakahtla in 1897), living and dead, in numbers which seem incredible. The males are then distorted, and it seems likely that all of them perish after spawning. The young are abundant in all the northern fiords. Even more inordinate numbers are reported from the shores of Greenland. The capelin seems to be inferior to the eulachon as a food-fish, but to the natives of arctic regions in both hemispheres it is a very important article of food. Fossil capelin are found in abundance in recent shales in Greenland enveloped in nodules of clay. In the open waters about the Aleutian Islands a small smelt, _Therobromus callorhini_, occurs in very great abundance and forms the chief part of the summer food of the fur-seal. Strangely enough, no complete specimen of this fish has yet been seen by man, although thousands of fragments have been taken from seals' stomachs. From these fragments Mr. Frederick A. Lucas has reconstructed the fish, which must be an ally of the surf-smelt, probably spawning in the open ocean of the north. The silvery species called _Argentina_ live in deeper water and have no commercial importance. _Argentina silus_, with prickly scales, occurs in the North Sea. Several fossils have been doubtfully referred to _Osmerus_. =The Microstomidæ.=—The small family of _Microstomidæ_ consists of a few degraded smelt, slender in form, with feeble mouth and but three or four branchiostegals, rarely taken in the deep seas. _Nansenia grœnlandica_ was found by Reinhardt off the coast of Greenland, and six or eight other species of _Microstoma_ and _Bathylagus_ have been brought in by the deep-sea explorations.