INTEODUCTION. 



V«^. 



At the close of a third triennial period this Fourth 

 Volume of Collected Reports upon the Fauna of Liverpool 

 Bay and the Irish Sea is now ready to be issued. As in 

 the case of the preceding volumes all the papers now 

 bound together as Vol. IV. have been read at some 

 period* during the last three years before the Liverpool 

 Biological Society; and the L.M.B.C. have to thank the 

 Council of that Society for the permission to print off 

 extra sheets of those papers in the " Transactions " which 

 deal with the Local Marine Fauna. 



This present volume practically brings the account of 

 the work of the Committee up to the end of the tenth 

 year ; the Committee was formed in 1885, the first volume 

 of the ''Fauna" was issued in 1886, Vol. 11. in 1889, 

 Vol. III. in 1892, and this fourth volume now appears in 

 the Autumn of 1895. The previous volume closed the 

 account of the work done in connection with the Biological 

 Station on Puffin Island. The present one commences 

 the record — which it is hoped may be a long one — of the 

 investigations carried on at the Committee's new Station, 

 at Port Erin, in the Isle of Man. This Biological Station 

 was formally declared open for scientific work by His 

 Excellency Spencer Walpole, LL.D., then Governor of 

 the Island, on June 4th, 1892 ; and since then — as the 

 reports in this volume show — the laboratory has been 

 frequently used by students, and has proved to be quite as 

 favourably situated and quite as weU adapted for fostering 

 the scientific investigation of the neighbouring sea as was 

 anticipated by the Committee when they chose the spot 



* In all cases the original dates of comimuiication are affixed to the papers. , 



