Atwood.] 402 [April 21, 



birds, but the recent researches of Hiittenbrenner of Vienna reconcile 

 the statements of the several observers by showing the variations of 

 the muscle in different species of birds. Thus there seems to remain 

 but little doubt that whatever its anatomical subdivisions, this is the 

 muscle of accommodation, and that it acts as in man. Dr. Jeffries 

 said he was unwilling to allow the statements of Dr. Coues and Prof. 

 Owen to pass by unchallenged in this Society, since he had twice 

 discussed the question of accommodation in man and other animals 

 at previous meetings, and illustrated the researches of Helmholz, 

 Donders and others. Dr. Jeffries exhibited enlarged drawings of sec- 

 tions of the eyes of man, various birds and other animals, in support 

 of the points he sustained. 



Capt, N, E. Atwood addressed the Society upon some 

 points in the natural history of a few of our edible sea fish, 

 and particularly of the halibut and blue-fish. 



In 1865 Capt. Atwood stated to the Society^ that the halibut fish- 

 eries (Hippoglossus vulgaris) extended from Nantucket shoals to Cape 

 Sable. The northernmost point at which this fish had been found 

 on the American coast was the island of Belle Isle, situated in the 

 straits of that name. Since then it has been discovered in great 

 abundance nine hundred miles further north, on the west coast of 

 Greenland; but the fishermen comj^lain that in this northern fishing 

 ground, halibut dying on the trawl are completely eaten out in a 

 single day by the "sea fleas." *The fishermen were driven to this new 

 place from the growing scarcity of the fish ; for, although nine tenths 

 of the halibut are females, and each female lays a prodigious quantity 

 of very small eggs, few come to maturity, and trawl fishing is rapidly 

 decimating this number; on the other hand, haddock {Morrhua cegle- 

 Jinus), where one sex does not seem to preponderate, and which lay 

 a smaller number of eggs, have been taken in the same enormous 

 quantities for twenty years. The iialibut fishery was first carried on 

 extensively in 1845, and the fish then brought but three cents per 

 pound; two years ago eighty-nine vessels fitted out for the cod fishery 

 brought home incidentally sixteen thousand (juintals of salted halibut; 

 the following year sixty vessels obtained but six thousand quintals. 

 Hundreds of vessels from the town of Gloucester alone have been 

 engaged in the halibut fishery; and being carried on partly in the 



' See these Proceedings, Vol. X, p. 182. 



