404 EXAMINATION OF THE PRESENT STATE 
found in the summer anywhere along the coast, quite close in 
from the reef to the Holmen, the ground about the mouth of the 
Limfjord being perhaps one of the most productive grounds. 
Moderate-sized fish, of which some 24 per cent. may be sexually 
mature, are to be had at the same season in the offing, but within 
the moraine previously mentioned. ‘The small fish, I find from my 
records, were still close in to the Holmen up to the last week of 
August, 1892, though I could find but few of them there a month 
earlier, probably on account of bad weather. 
On the other hand, about the middle of September a quantity of 
fine fish always appear in the same locality, but further out, viz. 
about twelve miles off the light. They stay there for some time, 
and our boats never neglect to take toll of them, 200 boxes being by 
no meaus an unusual “ voyage”’ for a steam trawler. The natural 
question as to whence they come and whither they go may for 
once, I think, be answered with some degree of confidence. It has 
long been known to Baltic naturalists that plaice, larger than the 
dwarfed native breed, enter the Sound and Baltic in the summer. 
The Danish fishermen called them “ priest’s flounders,’”’? as being 
fitter to cope with the sacerdotal appetite than the small natives: 
naturalists, regarding the Baltic dwarf as the type, considered the 
immigrants in the hght of a variety (P. platessa var. borealis, 
Gottsche). They are, in fact, ordinary North Sea plaice, and come, 
I have little doubt, chiefly from the Great Fisher Bank, whither 
they appear to return in the autumn, vid the Holmen ground ; 
picking up, most likely, some recruits on the way. There are plenty 
of large plaice on the Bank in the winter and through the spawning 
season, but after that, and throughout the summer and early 
autumn, there are comparatively few there. If the Baltic and 
Holmen migration theory is correct this is easily accounted for. 
The above is rather a digression from the subject of the present 
chapter—the destruction of immature fish—but it leads us to a point 
which has a distinct bearing on it. The Horn Reef seems to form 
a natural boundary between different plaice nurseries, of which the 
most considerable is of course the vast area of small fish ground 
south of the reef. I have been inclined to suppose that the 
grounds north of the reef are the nursery for the Fisher Bank 
plaice, and that the larger among the little ones find their way 
thither every autumn ; but of this I have no proof. 
But, as regards the grounds south of the reef, it is hardly 
possible to doubt that they furnish every year a contingent to the 
Dogger and other central grounds. About the end of July our 
trawlers regularly set out, unless they have better sport in hand, 
to the White Bank, Clay Deep, Back of the Scruff, Rising Ground, 
