While collecting on the Zostera beds at Grève d’Azette, Jersey, on August 23 1937 Mr R. B. Pike found fourteen specimens of an unknown lucernarian. These Zostera beds, made famous by the work of Mr J. Hornell, are now greatly impoverished, and at extreme low tide during the spring tide period only a few scattered patches of the weed remain.

Two groups of young herring are found in the Clyde. One, the offshore group, has been identified as Clyde spring-spawned herring; the other, the inshore type, is of unknown origin. The former were caught only occasionally, the latter at fairly regular intervals during their first year.

The two groups are distinguished by differences in size and identified as belonging to different races by vertebral counts. There was no intermixture.

The offshore herring which metamorphosed at the end of May when 40-50 mm. long, reached a length of 90-100 mm. in winter. The inshore fish which were about 50 mm. long in May reached a length of about 130 mm. in winter.

The yellowing which may occur during phosphate determinations in sea water is attributed to hydrolytic products of complex molybdenum halides.

When 1 ml. of the usual acid molybdate reagent is used per 100 ml. of water, addition of copper as recommended by Kalle reduces the development of colour in sea water samples and in distilled water standards to the same extent. The correction factor 1·12 applies to comparison by daylight in Hehner cylinders and to photometric determinations with a red filter.

When 2 ml. of reagent is used per 100 ml. of water, the factor depends on the method of comparison. With comparison by daylight in Hehner cylinders it is 1·35, whereas if a photometer with a red filter is used it is only 1·19.

The swimming and burrowing habits of four species of the genus Bathyporeia have been examined and shown to be alike, and similar to B. robertsoni as described by Schellenberg.

Swimming is effected by the pleopods working in a metachronal rhythm, drawing water along a ventral groove formed by the coxal plates of the second peraeopods and the expanded bases of peraeopods 3, 4 and 5.

The main water current enters anteriorly between the second gnathopods and is filtered by a series of feathered bristles borne on the basis of this appendage; a subsidiary current enters between the second and third peraeopods.

Burrowing is effected mainly by the sweeping action of the second gnathopods and first two pairs of peraeopods, aided by the first and second uropods as soon as they can obtain a purchase on the sand. The adaptation of these three pairs of appendages to burrowing is explained.

The paper on the ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus in the sea (Cooper, 1937) was written before it was realized that in phosphate determinations, using two ml. of molybdate reagent per 100 ml. of water, the magnitude of the salt error correction factor is changed by the use of a spectral filter. Due to the resulting uncertainty it was felt better to use uncorrected figures for phosphate content rather than to risk a correction which might later prove to be wrong.

The zonation of four species of the genus Bathyporeia, from high-water mark to low-water mark, in Kames Bay, Millport is given. B. pilosa occurs above the high-water mark of neap tides, B. pelagica is a mid-tidal form and B. elegans a low-water form. The latter, together with B. guilliamsoniana, extend beyond low-water mark. Of the population, as it occurs in the sand, 15 % are adult males, 26 % adult females, giving a proportion of adult to immature forms of 4 1 : 59.

The analysis of forty-five tow-net samples taken across the bay at night shows that the same zonation of the species is maintained; the proportion of adults to immature forms in these samples, however, is as 57: 43, and of the 57 % of adults, 42 % are adult males, 15 % adult females.

When the samples are related to the day of the lunar month it is shown that the numbers increase in the tidal waters in the periods immediately preceding the full moon and preceding and partly overlapping the new moon. A nocturnal vertical movement appears to be a marked feature of a few benthic amphipdd families, but the factors which cause this migration are problematical and require much further investigation.

At Station E I,22 sea miles south-west from Plymouth, the winter maximum for phosphate, representing the stock available for plant growth in the following spring, averaged 0·67 mg.-atom/m.3 for the winters 1923–4 to 1928–9 and only 0·47 mg.-atom for 1930–1 to 1937–8. This fall in phosphate shows a close correlation with the abundance of summer-spawning young fish (Russell). Since water containing similar low phosphate appeared to occupy the English Channel in 1916 (Matthews), the inflow of warm Atlantic water in the autumn of 1921 may well have brought with it the relatively rich phosphate found in the 1920's.

The impoverishment of phosphate around 1930 runs parallel with a decrease in the easting of the residual current at the Varne lightship in the Straits of Dover (Carruthers).

On the basis of spring phosphate consumption, the years may be classified in order of productivity:

The description of the material used in the present investigation does not conform with that of Horstadius. Attention is drawn to this lack of agreement. A hypothesis based on viscosity changes within the egg has been advanced to explain the rounding off of eggs in sea water.

By means of what is called the transfer series the egg batch has been divided into a number of parts; the last liberated eggs being the ripest. The occurrence of large numbers of egg batches giving low maturity values has been attributed to maturity resulting from a series of changes whose rate after initiation gradually increases.

Attention is drawn to seasonal changes in the reactions of the germinal products. No definite lunar periodicity is shown in the ripening of the eggs.

The results of a survey of the distribution of phosphates in the south-western area in April 1938 show that there were three regions exceptionally rich in phosphate. These regions appeared to be associated respectively with the outflow of the Bristol Channel, with the flow of more oceanic water across the entrance of the English Channel, and with upwelling of deeper water at the edge of the Continental Shelf.

The surface water was poorer in phosphate than the deeper water, and regions poorer in phosphate were in some cases associated with a crop of phytoplankton.

The diatom Ditylum brightwelli requires, for vigorous growth in artificial sea water, two organic substances, or groups of substances, in addition to inorganic salts. The substances, or groups, act in a manner complementary to each other.

The effect of adding either is greatly increased by the presence of the other.

One accessory substance, or group, has been obtained in impure state from natural sea water and from extracts of algae by adsorption on carbon and elution. It has properties of an inorganic acid or internal anhydride.

Phosphate, salinity and temperature records of waters of the North Sea and English Channel have been compared for April or May in the years 1935, 1936 and 1937, and the plankton distribution has been noted. Attention is called to the appearance of stability in certain features.

Thus, a high phosphate content was found to be associated with extremes of salinity and temperature, in similar areas in each year. The phosphate appears to be brought into the North Sea and Channel by oceanic water and by drainage from the land.

The plankton organisms were also similarly distributed in each year.

Chthamalus stellatus is a littoral barnacle very similar in habitat and general ecological relations to another littoral barnacle, Balanus balanoides. In those localities where both species flourish they compete considerably for space, and also possibly for food. The fact that B. balanoides settles sooner after the winter storms than does Chthamalus probably favours the former.

Chthamalus is characteristically a southern species and Balanus balanoides a northern one, but the north and south ranges of the two species overlap in the British Isles and in France. The determining factor is presumably temperature.

Chthamalus is an Atlantic species, and Balanus balanoides is more characteristically a North Sea species. The essential factor in Atlantic water remains unknown, although in respect of a need for Atlantic water Chthamalus resembles Sagitta elegans and intertidal Echinus esculent.

The suggestion that the enfeeblement of Zostera marina due to lack of sunshine in 1931–2 is the fundamental cause of the epidemic is not supported by the meteorological data available from 1897 onwards, or by the known extinction coefficients of the water.

The new species of Gammarus here described was first noted in 1931 by Prof. H. Munro Fox, to whom I am indebted for the opportunity of examining it. He found it in abundance in the Droitwich district, living in the brackish waters of the River Salwarpe near the town, in the Canal, and in Wyken Slough near Coventry.

An account of the chief earlier experiments, from those of Cavolini in 1785 to the close of Moores experiments in Florida in 1905, is given and the general subject of reconstruction and growth in the sponge cutting is described in detail.

Under favourable conditions loss of volume in the initial stages, following cutting, should be practically negligible, the early steps in repair and reconstruction proceeding without delay after severance of the fragment from the original sponge. As chief among these, the dermal covering required for newly cut surfaces, the closing of most of the exposed apertures of the old canal system, and the retention of one or more of these for future oscula, are accomplished rapidly and, for preliminary purposes, are completed within a very few days

The genus Bathyporeia was established by Lindström (1855, p. 59) on specimens collected in the Baltic at Wisby and Landskrona. His description is based, apart from a reference to the epimera as small and beset with hairs, on the form of the appendages. He assigned to the genus one species, pilosa, in which the segments of the body are described as smooth, the form generally rounded, the eyes black, small and somewhat reniform, and the length under three lines. He gives a detailed description and drawing of the appendages. From the description of the antennae and of the eyes it may be assumed that the specimens were females.