242 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



east to west. The dates begin in mid-winter (December to 

 January) in the extreme east, off the deep water of the 

 Norwegian Rift; the mean season around the Shetlands is 

 from March to June; that off the West Coast and the 

 Lewes is not earlier than July; while all our captures to 

 the west of the Lewes were made in the month of 

 September. 



Before accepting this evidence, clear as it may seem to 

 be, we must remember that the amount of trawling carried 

 on to the E. and N.E. of the Shetlands is at its maximum 

 in the spring of the year ; and that accordingly we are not 

 dealing in this region with a " fair sample," or uniform record, 

 of all-the-year-round fishing. In making allowances for this, 

 we may be helped by a comparison of our results in regard 

 to other fishes. If other of the rarer kinds were to show 

 similar results to those we have just discovered in the case 

 of Chimaera, we should naturally suspect that these results 

 were biassed by the nature and season of the fishing 

 operations. But we shall find that this is not so. The 

 phenomena in the case of Chimaera are on the whole peculiar 

 to that species, and we may safely draw the conclusion that 

 they give us a fair picture of its seasonal distribution and 

 of its natural movements. 



We must now begin to supplement our own records by 

 what we may learn elsewhere, and especially from Ireland 

 and from Norway. In the records of the Irish Fishery 

 Investigations we have a number of captures of Chimaera, 

 and Mr Holt has furnished me with some additional MS. 

 notes from his log-books. We have in all, from "this source, 

 records of Chimcera monstrosa from eighteen of the Irish 

 deep-sea trawling experiments, yielding in all about thirty- 

 two specimens, besides two more captured by a commercial 

 trawler. They are all from the W. and S.W. of Ireland, all 

 between 50 and 54 N., and between ii and I230' W. : 

 the great majority lie between 51 and 5 2 N., and between 

 n3o'and 12 W. 



These Irish records, like our own, seem to indicate a 

 certain amount of periodicity, though the case is complicated 

 by the irregular distribution of the experiments throughout 



