MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATIONS OF CANADA 
The Marine Biological Station has continued its work at Gaspé 
for a second season, in accordance with the course adopted by the Bio- 
logical Board, since the operations of the institution started nine years 
ago. At each site, to which this moveable scientific laboratory has been 
towed, the rule has been observed to devote at least two years to the 
thorough investigation of the locality, the first year being usually occu- 
pied with what may be called a preliminary survey of the faunistic 
peculiarities of the neighbouring waters, while the second year has been 
devoted to special detailed problems, and the carrying on of marine 
researches bearing directly on the more vital fishery questions charac- 
teristic of the locality. Dr. Stafford, the energetic curator of the 
Station, who had officially reported that he had had ‘a good year’ 
during the first season, especially in discovering the distribution of the 
vertebrate and invertebrate life in the waters of Gaspé Basin, and in the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence outside, followed up his faunistic investigations, 
and added substantially to the list of animals inhabiting the Atlantic 
waters of Canada, the first portion of which list has been for some time 
in the press, but has not yet been issued. The abundance of important 
food-fishes directly depends upon the plenitude or the paucity of the 
living organisms which constitute the characteristic fauna of each 
inshore or deep-sea area. Hence the great importance of a thorough 
faunistic survey in each locality along the coast. Professor A. P. 
Knight, of Queen’s University, Kingston, who has been most assiduous 
in his attendance at the station almost continuously since the founda- 
tion of the institution in 1898, and whose letter addressed to the Royal 
Society in 1895 may be said to have originally initiated the movement for 
a marine laboratory for fishery and allied scientific investigations, 
devised a series of, valuable and interesting experiments on the relative 
merits, or comparative attractiveness, of various kinds of bait. The 
effectiveness, in carrying on fishing operations, of fresh and of frozen 
bait has been under discussion by practical men for many years, and the 
carrying out by the Dominion Government of a fishermen’s bait-freezer 
scheme, during the past few seasons along the Atlantic shores, has inten- 
sified the interest of the controversy ; hence the necessity of an exact and 
unbiassed investigation such as that carried out by Dr. Knight, at the 
Biological Station at Gaspé, last season. The results of the research 
have not yet been published, but the report in preparation will be of 
unique interest, and certainly of exceptional practical value, when it is 
\ 
