MARINE BIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. 23 



countries^ and is^ in fact, a necessary consequence of the 

 great change which has taken place in the whole of the 

 aims of biological science. The study of development, 

 commenced in a serious way half a century ago, and the 

 further progress and ramifications of that line of inquiry, 

 which has been extended to the mode of existence of all 

 living things by Mr. Darwin, has caused a complete change 

 in the methods of biological science, and consequently, in 

 the methods by which biological investigation is pursued. 

 In order to understand the living being now, it is no longer 

 sufficient to be acquainted with its outside, as in the days 

 of our forefathers, or even with its inside, so far as obvious 

 anatomy is concerned, as was the case with the immediately 

 preceding generation. We now, in order to understand the 

 being, relations, and affinities of an animal, have to go back 

 through the whole course of existence beyond, in order 

 to trace out the successive stages of development from the 

 Ggg ; and this can now be done with a precision and 

 accuracy which in my young days we had no conception of. 

 But though from a purely scientific point of view this is 

 one great reason for establishing laboratories of the kind 

 now proposed, a more directly practical reason exists. We 

 possess great fisheries, which are more or less regulated by 

 legislation, and which are of great importance to very large 

 masses of the population. Hitherto — certainly within the last 

 thirty years — such regulations have been made in an almost 

 entirely haphazard manner, because of the want of know- 

 ledge of the habits, the mode of life, the mode of production, 

 &c., of the animals which are economically useful. At the 

 present time it is within my knowledge that a great deal of 

 vehement opposition to particular modes of fishing has been 

 due to the absolute ignorance of the fishing population of 

 some of the primary facts of the mode of life and repro- 

 duction of our food fishes ; and it is of essential importance 

 that those who wish to regulate fisheries should rest their 

 arguments and their reasonings upon a definite and solid 

 foundation, and upon a complete knowledge and sound ob- 

 servation of the mode of life and development, and so forth 

 of the animals which constitute the staple of our fishincr 



