REPORT OF THE COUNCIL. 261 
In the same number of the Journal the Director has published a 
revised list of the Polycheta of the Plymouth District and of the South 
Devon Coast, with records of the localities in which these annelids have 
been found. The list contains many new records for the English Channel 
and several for the British area. 
The Director has been engaged for a portion of the year in examining 
a large collection of larval and young stages of fishes made by Mr. Clark 
and Mr. Ford in the summer of 1914, by the use of Petersen’s young-fish 
trawl. This work will form the subject of a report on similar lines to 
those followed by Mr. Clark in his account in the Journal of the young- 
fish collections of 1913. 
In connection with a scheme drawn up by the Board of Agriculture and 
Fisheries for the study of the different races of herrings found around 
the British coasts, Dr. Orton, with the help of a number of other workers, 
has examined two large samples of the Plymouth winter herrings, each 
containing over 500 fishes. This investigation involved the measurement 
and enumeration of some eighteen characters on each fish. The figures 
have been sent to the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries for comparison 
with those obtained from other localities, and in order to make them 
generally available they are also being published in the Journal of the 
Association. 
A series of experiments has been commenced by Mr. D. W. Cutler, with 
a view to studying the growth of the scales of fishes kept in the Laboratory 
tanks under different conditions, especially as regards temperature. It 
is hoped that these experiments may throw some light upon the causes 
which produce the differences in the lines or markings on the scales 
now generally used in determining the age of fishes. Mrs. Matthews has 
taken charge of an investigation on the nutrition and growth-rate of 
fishes living under Aquarium conditions. 
Mr. Matthews has been making determinations of the phosphates in 
samples of sea-water collected at about intervals of one week outside 
Plymouth Breakwater, in order to study seasonal changes. A consider- 
able number of analyses have been made, and the results will be pub- 
lished in the next number of the Journal. The hydrographic work he 
was previously doing for the Fisheries Branch of the Department of 
Agriculture, etc. (Ireland), is in abeyance for the present, and since the 
latter part of October last he has been assisting in the chemical side of the 
investigations into cerebro-spinal meningitis which are being carried out 
at the Military Hospital at Stonehouse. The chemical work has been 
done in the Laboratory of the Association. 
Miss M. V. Lebour has taken up the study of Plankton, especially that 
of the most minute organisms which escape from the ordinary silk tow- 
NEW SERIES,—VOL, XI. NO. 2. MAY, 1917. s 
