MARINE BIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION. 33 



be complete without a thorough knowledge of their 

 associates in the sea, especially such as prey upon them, 

 or in turn constitute their food. 



" Furthermore, it was thought likely that peculi- 

 arities in the temperature of the water at different 

 depths, its chemical constitution, the percentage of 

 carbonic acid and of ordinary air, its currents, &c., 

 might all bear an important part in the general sum of 

 influences upon the fisheries ; and the inquiry, there- 

 fore, ultimately resolved itself into an investigation of 

 the chemical and physical characters of the water, and 

 of the natural history of its inhabitants, whether 

 animal or vegetable. It was considered expedient to 

 omit nothing, however trivial or obscure, that might 

 tend to throw light upon the subject of inquiry ; as 

 without such thorough knowledge it would be impos- 

 sible to determine with precision the causes affecting 

 the abundance of animal life in the sea, and the methods 

 of regulating it." 



Turning to the scientific object of these inquiries, Dr. 

 Carpenter remarked that he recollected the very beginning, 

 he might almost say, of the modern mode of the investiga- 

 tion of development. He could remember the sensation 

 produced among naturalists by the publication of the 

 researches of Vaughan Thomson, a retired army surgeon 

 living at Cork, which first taught them something of the 

 development of crustacean life, which showed them what had 

 been regarded as independent animals — the Zooea — were 

 really the young of the common crab, and who pointed out 

 that still more remarkable fact, that the barnacles and sea- 

 acorns were really modified forms of Crustacea. These 

 opinions were all pooh-poohed, and papers were published 

 by the Royal Society to show that Mr. Thomson was all 

 wrong, but yet his researches proved perfectly correct. He 

 remembered hearing while at Edinburgh nearly fifty years 

 ago, that Sir John Dalyell, a man of property and of scien- 

 tific habit of mind, was engaged in biological investigations. 

 Sir John Dalyell got information from all the fishermen 

 round Scotland, and made most wonderful observations. 

 His extraordinary discoveries were not believed by any- 

 body. They related to the development of Medusae from 



VOL. ], NO. I. 3 



