106 



The Ottawa Naturalist. 



[October 



former report. They cover very varied topics and many of them 

 are of inestimable value from a practical fishery point of view, 

 while all are valuable from the purely scientific standpoint. 

 The papers admit of a five-fold classification ; they are (a) those 

 essentially practical in object and character; (b) faunistic; (c) 

 embryological ; (d) chemico-physiological, and (e) botanical. 

 The authors a.re Professors Ramsay Wright, A. P. Knight, E. E. 

 Prince, A. B. Macallum and James Fowler; Dr. Joseph Stafford 

 and Dr. A. H. MacKay; Mr. G. A. Cornish and Mr. C. B. Rob- 

 inson; but neither the present scientific papers nor the fore- 

 going list of authors indicate the whole of the researches con- 

 ducted at the Biological Station, nor include all the staff of 

 brilliant investigators who have spent more or less time in its 

 laboratories. 



The primary object of the Station was to aid the fisheries 

 of the Dominion. As the fishes in the sea, indeed all the larger 

 forms of life, depend for sustenance upon the microscopic 

 organisms, which render sea-water "a kind of ininute broth," 

 as the late Dr. W. B. Carpenter happily styled it, Professor 

 Ramsay Wright appropriately heads the series with an account 

 of the "Plankton" of the Nova Scotian waters. Professor 

 Wright shows how minute plants, invisible to the naked eye, 

 crowd the surface waters. These build up the protoplasm 

 necessary as food to fishes and other marine creatures. The 

 herring and mackerel feed almost solely on this microscopic life, 

 collectively called the "Plankton." They are not all tiny plants, 

 some are infusorian animals, Foraminifera, Radiolarians and the 

 like. "No one sailing over the Atlantic," Professor Wright ob- 

 serves, "suspects the presence of such a rich vegetation, and 

 indeed it can only be disclosed by filtering the water through 

 an exceedingly fine fabric the finest silk gauze." Seven ex- 

 quisite plates indicate something of the variety and beauty of 

 the Plankton. More beautiful artistic illustrations it would be 

 difficult to imagine. They are heliotype reproductions of Mr. 

 J. R. G. Murray's drawings of Professor Wright's original 

 sketches done at the Station. No less than three species of the 

 tadpole-like larval Ascidians belonging to the Copelata were 

 secured near Canso. As, according to the poet, 



"The ancestor remote of inan, says Darwin, 

 Was the Ascidian," 



these small tailed creatures, showing the first indications of a 

 back-bone, are of uncommon interest. A most pecuHar egg, no 

 doubt that of some Gastropod shell-fish, is figured on the same 

 plate as the Ascidians, and "suggests in its shape," as Professor 

 Wright points out, "a low broad-brimmed hat." There are 



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