Iiz8 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



If it is demanded that more accurate knowledge of 

 fishery-animals shall be provided for the public use, then 

 arrangements must be made to enable skilled zoologists 

 to carry on the investigations required. To make such 

 investigations, continuous residence for weeks or months at 

 a time, by the sea-shore, is necessary. In France, Holland, 

 Italy, and the United States, sea- side laboratories have 

 been constructed, which are provided with working tables, 

 glass apparatus, aquariums, &c., and a staff of attendants 

 and fishermen to which naturalists can resort who desire 

 to carry on investigations upon the life-history of marine 

 organisms. Very valuable researches have been made 

 through the agency of these institutions, and there can be 

 no question as to the facilities which they afford, and the 

 inducement which their existence offers, to naturalists, to 

 occupy themselves with these particular studies. 



By offering free accommodation in such a laboratory 

 to competent investigators, you may obtain a large amount 

 of valuable results, at a minimum of expenditure. In any 

 such laboratory there would probably be one or two per- 

 manent officials who would be competentzoologists, charged 

 with special subjects of investigation and receiving salaries 

 but in addition to these, the laboratory would throw 

 open its resources to voluntary workers (as do the foreign 

 laboratories of which I have spoken), and thus the working 

 power and the general interest of the scientific world 

 in these institutions and their work would be enormously 

 increased. 



I can imagine a National Fisheries Society or Associa- 

 tion, such as may come into existence in connection with 

 this Exhibition, building such a laboratory for the study of 

 marine zoology in relation to fisheries, somewhere on the 

 coast not too distant from London. Such a laboratory 



