198 PRELLMINARY INQUIRIES AT PLYMOUTH INTO 



September, it is taken in the neighbourhood of the Eddy- 

 stone in hundreds and thousands, so that it becomes a pest 

 to the fishermen, as there is no market for it. 



No attempt was made to follow out the development of 

 these ova, because suitable arrangements were not available. 

 At that time the building was in a very early stage of con- 

 struction ; the stairs had not yet been made, and the plasterers 

 were everywhere at work, so that it was impossible for me 

 to take possession of any room in which to carry on my 

 work. I was occupying a small room in the fishermen's 

 quarter, which I had hired a day or two after my arrival in 

 Plymouth. This room was a short distance from the fish 

 quay, usually known as the Barbican, and this position was 

 its sole recommendation. It had a single window, from 

 which the sky was invisible, as it looked into a narrow 

 court only a few j^ards wide, on the other side of which 

 were house walls pierced by other small windows. 



In this room I kept alive ova of the cuckoo-fish, which I 

 fertilized on board a trawler on August 15th, for three days, 

 and made a few drawings of the successive stages of 

 development. These ova belong to a type which is common 

 to a large number of species of sea-fish. They are spherical, 

 with a transparent, structureless yolk, in which is a single 

 globule of oily matter. The egg-envelope is separated by 

 only a small space from the egg itself. 



At the beginning of November the Laboratory was suf- 

 ficiently advanced that a room in the west wing could be so 

 far finished that I could use it as a temporary work-room, and 

 accordingly it was supplied with some trestle tables, and I 

 occupied it from that time until a week before the formal 

 opening of the building. 



In November, December, and January some attention was 

 paid to the herring. At that season there is a regular 

 herring fishery at Plymouth, which consists of two branches, 

 a fishery inside the Sound, which is carried on by open 

 rowing boats working only two or three drift-nets each, and 

 a fishery outside along the coast as far as Bolt Head, carried 

 on by larger boats working complete *' fleets " of nets. On 

 clear, quiet, dark nights, when the herring are plentiful, 



