Ill 



The Director's Report.— No. 2. 



That most of the memoirs published in the present number of 

 the Journal are purely zoological or botanical may seem to belie the 

 promise made in my first report, that the Journal was to contain 

 scientific memoirs bearing directly or indirectly on economical ques- 

 tions. Some of the papers describing the local Fauna have, in fact, 

 an indirect bearing on fishery questions, for it is only by a study of 

 marine life as a whole and by the knowledge of the habits of a large 

 number of marine animals that we can hope to deal in a satisfactory 

 manner with problems relating to the fisheries. It must not be 

 understood that the papers published in the Journal represent the 

 whole even of the purely scientific work of the Association. Much, 

 research is in progress, the results of which will be published in 

 other scientific serials or in the Transactions of the learned societies, 

 and will receive bare mention in these pages ; other work is being 

 done which will never be published at all because it is tentative, and 

 it would be a waste of time to publish accounts of a series of fruit- 

 less experiments. The late Lord Beaconsfield, when he was laughed 

 down on making his maiden speech in the House of Commons, 

 finished by saying, " I have tried many, things many times and I 

 have found that I have generally succeeded in the end.''^ The same 

 saying will apply to scientific researches directed towards particular 

 objects. Many experiments must be made ; they must be made 

 many times and they will generally result in failure, but in the end 

 some success will be gained. That the greater part of this number 

 of the Journal is not devoted to fishery matters is due to the fact 

 that the experimental record of the past six months is largely a 

 record of failures, not by any means indicating a waste of time or 

 a want of skill on the part of those who have made the experiments, 

 but showing that tbe problems whicb have been undei'taken are 

 difl&cult, and that time, patience, and experience are required before 

 they can be worked out. The report of the Council gives an account 

 of the practical work which, is being cai-ried on under its direction, 

 and a further reason for the non-appearance of mucb fishery work 

 in these pages is that Mr. Cunningham's valuable work on the life- 

 history of the common sole is to be published as a separate volume. 

 Mr. Bateson's work on the physiology of the sense organs of fishes 



