3th EXAMINATION OF THE PRESENT STATE 
1892, I found myself in a most favourable position for prosecuting 
the inquiry, since ample supplies of fish could be obtained from the 
Grimsby market ; and in almost all cases I was able to ascertain, 
with sufficient accuracy, where they had been caught. It must not 
be supposed that all fish exposed for sale in the market are 
caught in the North Sea, or even landed at Grimsby, since a certain 
quantity is sent from distant ports (including Milford Haven), while 
the Grimsby boats themselves may derive their catches from such 
widely distant localities as the coast of Iceland or the Bay of Biscay. 
Still, with the ready assistance of all to whom I made application, I 
found no difficulty in distinguishing the locality of capture, and, so 
far as the present question is concerned, I confined my attention to 
fish caught in the North Sea. Flat-fish were of greater apparent 
importance than round-fish, so my researches dealt chiefly with the 
former. 
The results of my researches are given at some length in the 
Association’s Journal (N.8., vol. ii, p. 3863), but I think it will not 
be out of place to discuss them briefly in this article. 
The question is not altogether so simple as it might appear, owing 
to two considerations. Firstly, as to fish examined during or in the 
neighbourhood of the spawning season, there can be, so far as I can 
see, no means of distinguishing, by mere autopsy, whether a ripe 
fish is spawning for the first time or not. Secondly, in the case of 
a fish taken, at any time of the year, with the reproductive organs but 
little developed, there is a certain difficulty in determining whether 
that fish has not yet become sexually mature or whether it has repro- 
duced its species (during a previous spawning season or during a 
previous part of the same year) and is now in what may be termed a 
‘resting ”’ condition, so far as its generative functions are concerned. 
Personally I hold the view that, especially in the case of flat-fish, 
owing to their conformation and the topographical relations of the 
viscera, it is by no means difficult to arrive at a correct conclusion, 
when dealing with fish taken at a period remote from the spawning 
season ; while I am not aware of any evidence of the existence of a 
resting period which covers more than a trivial interval of time. It 
is within the bounds of possibility that some fish, after becoming 
ripe, do not develop generative products in every successive season, 
as hinted by Dr. Fulton ; but I do not know of any facts which can 
be adduced in favour of this view, and prefer to regard occasional 
instances of very large but apparently immature fish as explicable 
by the theory of absolute sterility, or great retardation of sexual 
development. 
The considerable degree of variation which one encounters in the 
assumption of the mature condition within the limits of one district 
