NORTH SEA INVESTIGATIONS. 217 



of time was necessarily taken up in arranging preliminaries and 

 settling the method of procedure. 



At present it seems advisable to confine my remarks to describing 

 the system on which work is carried out, deferring any report on 

 the results until such time as they shall be complete. 



I visit the market every morning in order to obtain fish for investi- 

 gating the condition of the reproductive organs at different sizes. 

 The quantity that can be got is, of course, regulated by the price, 

 which during the first two months of the year has been remarkably 

 high. It has, therefore, been impossible to devote much attention 

 to soles, but it may be expected that during the next few months 

 the price will become more reasonable, while the incidence of the 

 spawning period will be of advantage. In the case of turbot and 

 brill, which are brought to market ready gutted, it is possible to 

 make the necessary examination without injuring the saleable 

 quality of the fish, and for this purpose Mr. Bulpit, a salesman in 

 the market, has kindly allowed me access to any fish that come to 

 his stall. The removal of a small piece of the testis or ovary, for 

 microscopical examination in doubtful cases, causes no injury. The 

 fish purchased are conveyed by the attendant to the hatchery, where, 

 with the necessary apparatus at hand, careful observations ai-e 

 subsequently made. Details as to the number of fish examined will 

 be found annexed. 



Incidentally to this investigation a good deal of information is 

 obtained as to the spawning period of the prime fish on the different 

 grounds, and much can also be learnt by observing the operations 

 at the gutting tables, where the coarser kinds of fish are cleaned for 

 transmission or curing. 



Considerable difficulty has been encountered in obtaining accurate 

 statistics as to the distribution and annual destruction of immature 

 fish on the different grounds. The weight of fish captured is 

 accessible, since Mr. W. Hood, statistician to the Board of Trade at 

 this port, kindly allows me to inspect his books, and by this means, 

 from general observations of the fish in the market at different 

 seasons, a computation can be made ; but its value is at best doubt- 

 ful. Obviously statistics, to be reliable, must be collected at sea, 

 and for this purpose I have endeavoured to enlist the assistance of 

 as many skippers of trawling vessels as possible, and have been 

 helped by the influence of Mr. Olsen, Mr. G. L. Alward, and others 

 at Grimsby, and have been promised assistance from other parts of 

 the coast. At first I tried entrusting such skippers as would take 

 them with note-books, lists of sizes, and measures, but soon found 

 that, although in a few cases the results were satisfactory, this 

 method of keeping records was too great a tax upon the time of 



