274 EXPERIMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS 
had an opportunity of examining a large number of soles of about 
this size. 
In the course of some work on which I was engaged for the 
Hssex Technical Instruction Committee I made as careful a study 
as possible in May and June, 1894, of the fish and marine fauna of 
the estuary of the Colne and the neighbouring sea channel called 
the Wallett. On June 8th I went out for a trip in one of the 
shrimping smacks belonging to Brightlingsea. The boat was 85 to — 
40 feet long, cutter-rigged and very low in the water. She carried 
a shrimp trawl of 25 feet beam, with a mesh at the cod end of about 
inch square. We ran down the Colne with a fair breeze and shot the 
trawl just beyond the bar, towing eastward, and afterwards took 
two other hauls further eastward and further from the shore, the last 
being finished when we were a little to the east of Clacton. 
In each haul there were a large number of interesting things 
besides the shrimps which were the object of the fishing. The red 
shrimp (Pandalus annulicornis) was most abundant, but there were 
some brown (Crangon vulgaris) also. ‘The ground at the second 
haul was hard cultch ; the dredge put over for a few minutes brought 
up only empty oyster-shells. ‘The depth was 2 to 5 fathoms at low 
water. 
A few fair-sized fish were caught, but none mature. They were 
plaice, small soles, and dabs. A great number of very small fish 
were caught. The smallest were dabs and plaice, the latter from 
2 to 6 inches long. The most noticeable feature was the very large 
number of lemon soles 4 or 5 inches long, and doubtless a year old ; 
hundreds of these were culled out from the first haul, and they were 
almost as numerous in the second and third. Soles of the same 
range of size, 3 to 5 inches, were also very abundant, but not quite 
so numerous as the lemon soles. I have never met with so large a 
collection of yearling soles and lemon soles. JI was unable to give 
my attention to a thorough investigation of this ground to find out 
what the fish were feeding on, and what their prey was feeding on,— 
in fact, to obtain an explanation of the abundant life in this channel. 
I opened a young dab 4 inches long, and found it contained a small 
Amphipod, probably Gammarus. I found a Gadus luscus had its 
stomach distended with the red shrimp Pandalus. 
V. Nores on Rare or INTERESTING SPECIMENS. 
During last August mackerel were unusually plentiful in Plymouth 
Sound, and several large hauls of them were made by means of 
seines close to the shore below the Laboratory, in the little cove 
