BIOLOGICAL SURVEY OF WOODS HOLE AND VICINITY. 87 
In its scope this Plymouth census covers an area which ‘‘roughly speaking, . 
may be said to lie within a radius of 15 miles from the laboratory,” and “‘extends from 
the shore to a depth of 30 to 35 fathoms.”’ The area is thus somewhat smaller than is 
comprised within the Woods Hole region,? as we have defined it, though considerably 
greater depths have been included. But the scope of the two catalogues is fairly com- 
parable, save for the exclusion of vertebrates from the Plymouth list, and some instruc- 
tive comparisons are possible. In the Plymouth region, as in our own, systematic 
dredging has been carried on throughout considerable areas. Indeed the biological 
survey conducted by E. J. Allen? and his colleagues in adjacent portions of the English 
Channel appears to be one of the most exhaustive investigations extant of the rela- 
tions between fauna and bottom deposits. 
Commencing with 1885, another group of English biologists, under the lead of 
Prof. W. A. Herdman, have been engaged in a systematic study of the fauna of the 
Irish Sea.” Especial attention has been devoted to Liverpool Bay and to the vicinity . 
of the Isle of Man, but a large part of the bottom of the Irish Sea has been explored, 
and the fauna and bottom deposits have been analyzed with great thoroughness. The 
results of this work have been communicated from time to time in the Reports of the 
Liverpool Marine Biology Committee, in the Transactions of the Liverpool Marine 
Biological Society, in the Reports of the British Association, as well as in a separate 
series of volumes entitled “Fauna of Liverpool Bay’’ (no. i-v). A complete list of the 
species recorded up to that date was published in the report of the British Association 
for 1896, and a synopsis of this list has been included in our comparative table. 
The greater number, at least, of the leading biological stations of the world have 
devoted more or less attention to the enumeration of the organisms found in their 
immediate vicinity. This is preeminently true of the Naples station, the pioneer 
among marine laboratories. One need allude only to the splendid monographs com- 
prised in the ‘‘Fauna und Flora”’ series, and to the less pretentious faunistic contri- 
butions published from time to time in the ‘‘Mittheilungen”’ of the station. So far as 
we know, however, no single inclusive list of species has been published which renders 
possible, without great labor, a comparison with the fauna of Woods Hole. 
At the Trieste station, maintained by the Austrian Government on the Adriatic 
Sea, a census of the local marine fauna has for many years past been conducted by 
Graeffe (1880-1903), and lists of species have appeared comprising most of the chief 
divisions of the animal kingdom. Here, as at Plymouth, abundant data are recorded 
respecting reproduction and general ecology. In the last column of our comparative 
table we have indicated the number of species recorded by Graeffe for each group of 
animals. 
It is obvious that these various faunal catalogues differ widely from one another 
in respect to their scope. Three of them are restricted to the invertebrates, while in 
only one (that of Woods Hole) are the marine birds listed. Likewise, at Woods Hole 
alone, among these stations, has any serious attempt been made to list the fish parasites, 
either the worms or the copepods. On the other hand, the Foraminifera and some 
other groups have received relatively little attention in our survey. 
a In reality, however, the vast majority of our records relate to a region of much smaller extent. 
b See Allen (1899), D. 365-542. 
¢ Prof. Herdman had some years earlier taken part in a census of the invertebrate fauna of the Firth of Forth. (See Leslie 
and Herdman, 188r.) 
’ 
