abstracts: fisheries 323 



encountered in soil anywhere. Its formation or accumulation is doubt- 

 less due to local conditions which may obtain in any region. Of 25 

 good soils examined, only two contained dihydroxystearic acid, and they 

 were of moderate productivity. Of 35 poor soils examined 51 per cent 

 contained it. Of the soils which had a record for infertility, the dihy- 

 droxystearic acid was found in every case. It is either a direct or an 

 indirect factor in low productivity, direct because of its harmful effects 

 and indirect as arising and accumulating under poor soil conditions. The 

 determination of this one constituent leads to a recognition of the kind of 

 infertility in the soils examined and is, therefore, a readily recognized 

 symptomatic factor of poor soil conditions. M. X. Sullivan. 



FISHERIES. — Fishes from Bering Sea and Kamchatka. Charles 

 Henry Gilbert and Charles Victor Burke. Bulletin of the 

 Bureau of Fisheries, 30: 31-96. 1910. 37 text fig. Issued May 6, 

 1912. 



This paper, based upon collections by the United States Fisheries 

 Steamer Albatross during her cruise in the northwest Pacific in the sum- 

 mer of 1906, "serves again to emphasize the bewildering richness of the 

 northern Pacific in cottoid and liparid forms. Genera like Triglops, 

 Icelus, Artediellus, . and Gymnocanthus, which are represented in the 

 north Atlantic by one, or at most two, species, contain in the northwest- 

 ern Pacific numerous forms, some of which may be widely divergent. 

 Such facts are usually accepted as conclusive evidence of the original 

 home and the center of dispersal of the group thus richly represented." 



"On the basis of the hasty reconnaissance which the Albatross was 

 able to make in passing, no sharply defined faunal lines are indicated 

 in the region here considered. In passing from the eastern end of the 

 Aleutian chain westward to Attu and Agattu only minor changes seem 

 to occur. There is no perceptible break between the Aleutians and 

 the Commander Group. The best defined division appears to coincide 

 with the deep channel which separates the Commander Islands from 

 Kamchatka. This is indicated by the failure of certain species to cross 

 this barrier, and by the presence on the two sides of incipient species — 

 representative forms which liave only slightly diverged, as though under 

 the influence of prolonged isolation." 



These collections were found to contain 121 species of fishes, of which 

 35 are described as new, 8 of the genera also being new. 



Ethel M. Smith. 



