INTRODUCTION. Vll. 
power each, which can be lowered by means of a water- 
proof flexible cable to any required depth in the water. 
This fortunate circumstance has enabled us, on the expe- 
ditions to the Isle of Man, in May, 1888, and April, 1889,* 
to make a number of experiments with illuminated surface 
and bottom tow-nets at various depths from the surface of 
the sea down to thirty fathoms, which have convinced us 
that the electric light acts as an attraction to many of the 
free-swimming animals provided with eyes, such as the 
Copepoda, the Amphipoda, the Schizopoda, and especially 
the Cumacea, and may even bring them up to the surface 
from a depth of five fathoms. 
The establishment of a small Biological Station on the 
uninhabited Puffin Island, off the N.E. coast of Anglesey, 
is certainly the most important event which has occurred 
in the history of the L.M.B.C. since the publication of the 
first volume. An account of the foundation of this seaside 
laboratory, and an outline of the work which has been 
carried on in it during the last two years, is given in 
the first two articles in this volume, while references to 
animals found around Puffin Island, and to observations 
made in the laboratory there, will be found scattered 
through nearly all the reports. Notwithstanding its 
distance from Liverpool, its almost complete inaccessibility 
except during calm weather, and the extreme and even 
forbidding plainness of its equipment, a number of the 
Committee and a few other biologists have paid periodic 
visits to the station, ranging from a few days to several 
weeks at a time, and have carried on investigations upon 
most of the groups of invertebrate animals found on the 
shores of the island. The establishment of this Biological 
Station on Puffin Island has not only been a great 
* See the accounts in ‘‘Nature,” for June 7th, 1888, and May 9th, 1889, 
and also further on in the present volume. 
