IS NORTH SEA INVESTIGATIONS. 



smaller lish until it was too late. The fact that he put down all the 

 females under 13 in. which he examined as immature, tends to support 

 my contention that hitherto plaice which have spawned and recovered, 

 have been fre(|uently confounded with immature. At the same time, it 

 is an established fact that plaice and other fish do not all begin to spawn 

 at the same size, and that some immature specimens are larger than 

 others which are spawning. The question is, what is the maximum 

 size of the immature, and that, in my judgment, cannot be determined 

 until a large number of specimens are examined in November and 

 December. 



On March 13th I bought some of the smallest fish out of a box of 

 large plaice from the Great Fisher Bank, in order to further examine 

 the condition of deep-water plaice. Of these, 6 were males from 14| to 

 17^ in. long, all ripe. Only 3 were females; one was 12i in. long, the 

 ovary small and apparently immature, the end of it 2f in. from the 

 anterior end, 4 in. from the posterior end of the ventral fin. Only 

 transparent eggs were visible under the microscope, and as far as could 

 be judged at that time of year, the specimen was immature. The 

 second was 1G| in. long, and certainly spent, the third 20^ in. long, 

 ripe. 



On March 20th, I saw landed the first "voyage" of small plaice from 

 the Eastern Grounds, They were caught on the Sylt ground south of 

 the Horn Keef Light, at a depth of 13 to 17 fathoms. There were 246 

 boxes of small, 29 of somewhat large fish, and the price was lis. to 12s. 

 a box for the small, 18s. for the larger. I examined a sample of the 

 small: they were taken at random, without any selection, and were 

 given to me by Mr. George Alward. The total number was 55, the 

 sizes and sexes being as follows : — 



7 in. 



8 „ 

 q 



10 „ 



12 „ ... 



34 21 



In all the males the testes were a mere thin band, and apparently 

 immature. In none of the females was the spent condition found with 

 certainty, the ovaries were all small, as in the immature, and under the 

 microscope all the ova yolkless. But in nearly all granular masses 

 were present in the germinal tissue, although these in most cases were 

 very rare and small. In one specimen 10| in. long, they were large and 



