IN CERTAIN BAYS ON THE COAST OF DEVON. 91 



comparison of the results obtained by me with those obtained for the 

 above-mentioned districts, will be held over until my own results are 

 more complete. But I may perhaj)s take occasion to point out that my 

 object is not so much to arrive at conclusions, as to the general distribu- 

 tion of fish of different species and of different sizes, as to acquire a more 

 exact knowledge of the changes which take place in the populations 

 inhabiting particular areas. 



The areas selected in the first instance were Start Bay, Tor Bay, and 

 Teignmouth Bay ; and the 24-ton smack Thistle, of Brixham, carrying 

 a trawl with a 40 ft. beam, was hired by the Association for the purposes 

 of the investigation. I desire to take this opportunity of thanking the 

 skipper and crew of this vessel for the willingness they showed in 

 carrying out my wishes. At the same time, it may not be superfluous 

 to point out that in undertakiug work of this kind the Association is 

 very seriously hampered by the want of a suitable steamer. Much 

 time is necessarily lost on a sailing-vessel, even under favourable condi- 

 tions, and calm weather may stop work entirely. Further, the necessity 

 of making special arrangements as to hiring, and the delay that this 

 entails, renders it impossible to make use of short spells of favourable 

 weather. Moreover, the lack of accommodation on board a small smack 

 puts any but the most cursory examination of specimens while on board 

 entirely out of the question. In fact, it is not too much to say that the 

 work might have been done with half the expenditure of time, and 

 with far greater completeness, if the Association had had a steamer of 

 its own. 



So far, I have made two separate trips to the above-mentioned bays. 

 On each occasion I was accompanied by the Association's fisherman, 

 H. Eoach. 



The first of these trips lasted five days, from October 28th to 

 November 1st; on the second, bad weather rendered all further work 

 impossible at the end of the third day — December 4th. 



The mode of procedure was as follows : — The times of shooting and 

 hauling the trawl, the direction of the wind, the set of the tide, the 

 depths in fathoms and the exact position of the vessel at the beginning 

 and end of a shot, were all recorded. Notes were made of the "rubbish" 

 that was brought up in the trawl ; and, lastly, all the food-fish caught 

 were measured to the nearest quarter of an inch. The measurements 

 were, in all cases, made from the end of the snout to the tip of the tail. 



Hauls were taken both by niglit and by day ; and my efforts were 

 directed, on the first trip, to obtaining fair samples of the populations 

 of the several bays, and, on the second, to conducting operations in such 

 a way that the successive hauls obtained in December might fairly be 

 compared with those obtained in the same bays a month before. 



