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The Age of Fishes and the Rate at which they Grow. 
Beiny the Presidential Address delivered before the Devonshire Association 
for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art at the 
Plymouth Meeting, 18th July, 1916, 
By 
E. J. Allen, D.Sc., F.R.S. 
Director of the Plymouth Laboratory. 
[Reprinted from the Transactions of the Devonshire Association.] 
With Figures 1-9 in the Text. 
Ar a time like the present, when the Empire we have inherited stands 
facing a crisis of its fate, when indeed the whole structure of civilization 
as we know it has seemed to sway, when that which generations of 
earnest thinkers have dreamt of as the progress of the race recoils before 
the forces it has itself unchained, it is difficult to restrain a feeling of 
incongruity in discussing any subject that has no obvious bearing on the 
greater problems of the hour. But I am convinced that we are following 
the right course in carrying on, with such help as remains available, the 
work of this Association, whose object is the advancement of Science, 
Literature and Art. In the short, swift cataracts of war, no less than in 
the gentler, steadier flow of peace, these matters of the mind have still 
their power. 
In selecting a subject upon which to address you it has seemed to me 
best not to attempt to travel beyond the limits of that branch of Science 
with which my own studies have been chiefly concerned, and the science 
of Marine Biology is one which has special claims on a Devonshire Society. 
The work of Colonel Montagu at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
which gave us the first descriptions of so many of our British marine 
animals, and by the acuteness and accuracy of its observations laid the 
foundation of future knowledge of their habits and life-histories, was 
practically all carried out in the Saleombe and Kingsbridge estuaries. 
Dr. Leach, the pioneer in the study of British Crustacea, was born at 
Hoe Gate House, within a few yards of Plymouth Hoe, and some of his 
collections still find a home in the museum of the Plymouth Athenzeum. 
Philip Gosse studied the shore life of our Devonshire coast at Torquay 
and at Ilfracombe, and his book on those British Anemones, which he 
