The old type of wire-angle indicator, which consisted of a pendulum swinging across an arc of a circle graduated in degrees, and which had to be applied by hand to the wire, was clumsy to use, especially in bad weather, and when the wire led out over the stern of the ship. It needed someone to attend to it, which often resulted in the wire angle not being checked more than once every five or ten minutes when the crew were busy. This instrument was therefore designed to remain in place throughout the tow, and to give a large dial reading which could be easily seen from a distance. On the research ketch Culver there is an engine throttle control mounted close to the wheel, and all the man there has to do is to adjust the engine speed so that the large indicator in the instrument remains on the red line. In practice it was found that the wire angle rarely varied more than about ±2°, except in very bad weather, and so the depth of the nets could be regulated very closely. The instrument is oil damped, so that the pitching of the ship and the vibration of the wire during hauling do not affect it. It has been used for about two years on the Culver at Bermuda; it has needed no attention in that time, and, which is a good point, the crew like using it.

In October 1935, investigators from eleven countries represented on the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea met at Lowestoft to discuss the co-ordination of the results of herring research (Cons. Int. 1936 p. 7).

The foregoing pages include an account of the anatomy and histology of the male and female genital ducts of Ocenebra erinacea, Nucella lapillus, Nassarius reticulatus and Buccinum undatum. Observations have also been made on the mode of functioning of the ducts and the formation of the egg capsules.

In both male and female it is possible to divide the genital ducts into a narrow and thin-walled proximal section which leads from the gonad and opens into a thick-walled glandular distal region, and in this respect the Stenoglossa agree with the mesogastropods. Near the junction of these two portions, in the female, arises the gonopericardial duct, which puts the genital duct into communication with the pericardial cavity; in males this structure i s lost or reduced to a vestige lying in a similar position.

In males the upper part of the proximal region of the genital duct is used as a vesicula seminalis and the epithelium is capable of taking up and digesting effete or superfluous sperm. Sperms are passed from it into the anterior, distal region during the act of copulation, and secretion from the glands is mixed with them and provides the medium in which they are transferred to the female. In Ocenebra and Nucella this glandular region, the prostate, extends only as far as the opening of the mantle cavity, from which a continuation of the duct, without glandular walls, runs to the penis. The entire distal half of the male duct shows evidence of having been derived from an open seminal groove such as is found in Littorina.