The Council.

Since the last Annual Meeting the Council has met ten times for the conduct of the business of the Association.

The vacancies caused by the retirement of E. W. H. Holdsworth, Esq., and of G. J. Romanes, Esq., F.R.S., were filled in July by the election of Sir Albert Rollit, M.P., and of S. J. Hickson, Esq., D.Sc. No changes have occurred during the year among the Officers.

The Council has to acknowledge the courtesy of the Royal Society in granting the use of its rooms for the several meetings of the Association.

The returns kindly sent in by Mr. Roach have been tabulated in the following pages.

The period during which Mr. Roach made his observations extends from October 23rd, 1889, to September 29th, 1890.

Concerning the particular localities in which the fish have been caught, it may be useful, for those who are not familiar with the coast, to explain that the fish make their appearance on the coast at a considerable distance to the east of Plymouth (18—20 miles). The shoals then appear to travel in a westerly direction, some going off into deeper water, all moving about in a more or less uncertain manner. The head-quarters of the fishery eventually become fixed south of Plymouth and Eddystone Light. Gradually the fish seem t o approach the shore, swimming now in large shoals. Many enter Plymouth Sound and are taken in comparatively shallow water, while others travel west, also in shallow water. The “remarks” for August are instructive. We find that, besides the ordinary and large fish, there are also “small fish about the size of pilchards” in the Sound, that “numerous large shoals” are noticed, and that at a later date the fish “seem to be leaving Plymouth Sound.” On September 1st we find the note that “the mackerel are going off into open water and the shoals breaking up.” On the breaking up of the shoals the mackerel fishing is considered to be at an end.

The past summer has been a busy one at Plymouth, and the steady continuance of magnificent weather has made shore-collecting, as well as dredging and tow-netting from the boats, possible at all points in the neighbourhood. The fine weather, as compared to the weather of last summer, seems, moreover, to have had a distinct influence on the pelagic fauna of the Channel. There has been towards the end of the summer a continuance of unusually interesting surface forms, and at the same time almost a total absence of some of the creatures usually found in abundance. For instance, Aurelia has for some unaccountable reason not been found in the Sound this summer, although I have heard of its occurrence in usual numbers in the Solent. Last summer brought innumerable millions of Noctiluca, so that the sea for miles showed orangered tracks through the dense crowding of these infusorians. This summer has produced practically none.

The reproductive organs of Teleosteans have been studied by many writers. All observations, however, appear to be either on the organ as seen at only one season of the year, or on the early maturation of the ovum and development of the embryo. I do not in this paper concern myself with the primitive development of the ovary, or the subsequent growth of the permanent ova from the primitive ova or sexual cells of the embryo (1). My attention is rather centred on the adult and mature organ in its various conditions of sexual activity or repose.

The egg of this species has been described and discussed by Professors McIntosh and Prince, by Mr. E. W. L. Holt, and by myself. Raffaele, in his paper in the Mittheilungen of the Naples Station, vol. viii, described the yolk in the ovum of Callionymus festivus as having a peripheral layer of yolk-segments, but no reticulated marking on the surface of the vitelline membrane; while all we English observers have agreed in stating that the egg of Callionymus lyra, our common dragonet, has a reticulated marking on the vitelline membrane, but no yolk-segments. I was, therefore, very much surprised, in examining some eggs of this species from the tow-net this year, to find that there actually was a peripheral layer of yolk-segments, which had hitherto been overlooked.

The general condition of the Laboratory since the date of my report in the last number of the Journal calls for little mention. Some slight repointing of the walls and glazing has been necessary to keep out the winter rains, and the overhaul of one of the gas engines deemed desirable for the proper continuation of pumping without loss of gas. In other respects the entire building continues to render every satisfaction.

The work done by the various members of the Staff will be most readily estimated by the perusal of the several papers written by the members, and need not be mentioned in detail by me.

In my last report I made mention of the fishery investigations to be carried on by Mr. Holt in the North Sea, stating that in this Journal I would probably be in a position to state upon what lines the observations had been begun.

Since the issue of last number, another Fishery Conference has been held at Fishmongers’ Hall under the auspices of the National Sea Fisheries Protection Association. At this conference the capture and sale of undersized fish was again under discussion, and again a resolution was passed defining, to the satisfaction of most of those present, the sizes below which soles, plaice, turbot, &c., should not be captured and sold. The discussion, as well as the resolution, proved abundantly to anyone at all acquainted with the sizes at which the various food fishes first spawn, that the sizes were arrived at purely with a view to keeping undersized fish out of the market, and without any reference to the maturity or immaturity of these fish.

The data for this paper were again supplied by Mr. Roach, and have all been reduced to tabular form. I shall here state only the general results.

The total number of lobsters taken was 1753. Of these 1226 were males and 527 females, i. e. 699 more males than females.

Last autumn the occurrence of a small Siphonophore in the produce of the surface tow-nets attracted my attention. I first noticed it in the contents of a small net, worked five miles south of the Eddystone, on September 12th, and afterwards it was obtained in great abundance close to the. Plymouth Breakwater, and even inside the Sound. It was brought in numbers to the Laboratory almost every day up to about the middle of October, but after the end of that month it was not seen again.

On the 6th of January, 1892, Dr. Elliot of Kingsbridge most generously presented to the Marine Biological Association a large and interesting Cephalopod which was captured off Salcombe.

Dr. Elliot brought the squid to the Plymouth Laboratory, and it was subsequently purchased for the Oxford Museum by Prof. Ray Lankester, who requested me to identify it, giving me much kind help, for which I wish to express my sincere thanks.

It may be well to preface the paper on the Production of Artificial Baits by a short statement as to the way in which the experiments were taken up by Mr. Hughes.

Before the Laboratory of the Association was built, it had often been observed in other aquaria that female conger after living for some time in captivity, feeding regularly and voraciously, and growing with considerable rapidity, passed into a swollen and apparently gravid condition and then died. Such conger when dissected after death were invariably found to contain enormously developed ovaries or roes, which entirely filled up and distended the abdominal cavity, and pressed the intestine and other abdominal organs into as small a space as possible. The following are the principal records of cases in which this has been observed.

Two specimens of this Elasmobranch have recently been landed at Plymouth, the one on the 21st of June, and the other on the 8th of July. They were both captured by steam trawlers working off Vigo Bay on the north-west coast of Spain. The specimens cannot, therefore, be claimed as English; but since only one example appears to have been previously landed in this country, having been taken off the coast of Cornwall in 1877; and since the fish is, therefore, not at all well known, a few notes on the two specimens brought to the Laboratory may be of interest.

The reasons which induced the Association to undertake this work, and the nature of the investigations proposed to be carried out, will be familiar to readers of this Journal (see vol. ii, No. 2, p. 88), and need not be here recapitulated. I shall, therefore, confine myself to a brief account of such progress nshas already been made.

Grimsby was selected as head-quarters, as being the port from which the largest number of boats work, and, in fact, the head-quarters of the North Sea Trawling Industry. A local body, the Marine Fisheries Society, has for the last few years been carrying on work in Grimsby, principally in connection with the culture of sea fish, and for that purpose has erected an aquarium or hatchery at Cleethorpes, a small watering-place and fishing village on the outskirts of the town. It was felt that it would be of great advantage if the Association could secure the co-operation and assistance of this Society, and communications accordingly passed between the Director and Mr. 0. T. Olsen, Secretary of the Society and also a member of the Association, and to whose energy and enthusiasm the foundation and subsequent success of the Society are in great measure due. As a result the Society at once promised every assistance in their power, and furthermore placed their premises at Oleethorpes at my disposal for such work as could be most conveniently carried on there. The hatchery contains glass and slate tanks of various sizes, with apparatus for circulating the water, and its reservoir is connected with the sea pump of the adjacent public baths, so that direct communication with the Humber can be established at any time.

Dr. Wemyss Fulton has made an extensive investigation of the distribution of immature sea fishes, and has published his results in the Report of the Scottish Fishery Board for the year 1889. He had at his disposal a sea–going vessel specially adapted to fishery investigations, and his data were obtained exclusively by means of this vessel. As scientific Secretary to the Board Dr. Fulton is attached to the Office in Edinburgh, and the observations he required were made and recorded according to his directions by the naturalists on the Board's steamer “Garland.” The conception and the execution of this investigation are both admirable, and it has supplied a great deal of definite knowledge upon subjects of great importance on which previously we knew little or nothing. The enquiry consisted in determining firstly, from the examination of a large number of specimens, the minimum and maximum size of sexually ripe specimens smaller than this minimum size at various depths and various distance from shore. The enquiries described in the present paper are to some extent similar to Dr. Fulton's, but in the main they are different both in object and in method. My first object was as far as possible to ascertain something of the rate of growth of sea–fishes of various species. With this purpose, I have searched for young specimens in all possible ways, and have measured and preserved all I could meet with.

Until the year 1881, when Balfour wrote on the subject, the pronephros was generally believed to be a functional kidney, not only in the larval condition, but also in those adult forms described as possessing the organ.

Balfour, in his more detailed paper, published later, states that in the fishes examined—pike, eel, smelt, and angler—although the pronephros had all the appearance, externally, of a true functional kidney, no uriniferous tubules were present, and that a minute examination only disclosed a degenerate trabecular tissue which he describes as lymphatic.

The angler (Lophius), it may be observed, is generally considered to possess only a head kidney. This organ Balfour found to be in a perfectly functional condition, but he declines to believe that it is a persistent head kidney, and argues from the highly modified structure of the fish that the organ in question is in reality the mesonephros. shifted forward from its normal position. He also maintains that in adult Ganoids the head kidney has no longer a renal function. His general conclusion, therefore, is, that since the pronephros was only supposed to persist in Ganoids and Teloosteans, it must be now considered as non-existent except in the embryonic or larval conditions.