I> 
fish ‘would come back. ~The year following I went to Fleet- 
wood to investigate. The first sight that caught my-:eye 
was no less than fourteen boats trawling in the channel. 
The fishermen said they had never known such an abund- 
ance of fish. I cannot, however, do better than .copy the 
report I sent at the time to Mr. Buckland, which appeared 
in Land and Water. 
és aoe year I called your attention to the enormous 
deposit of mussel spat at Fleetwood, and, in fact, every- 
where that I have visited. I have just returned from a 
rather long visit to Fleetwood, and I have brought 
with me somé of the young mussels of last year, a few 
of which I enclose you. You will note that, like most 
forms of aquatic life, their progress during the twelve 
months has varied very much indeed. Some of the 
banks are far more advanced than others. I have 
made a careful. examination of the beds, and much as 
the prodigious fall last year suprised me, I am still 
more astonished at the sight presented now. Every 
inch of ground to which a mussel could anchor itself, 
even almost to high-water mark, has been taken posses- 
sion of. Scores of acres of gravel beds, which, with 
thirty years’ experience of the coast, I have never 
known as mussel beds, are now densely crowded with 
them. They have completely altered the nature of the 
shore, and over vast tracts where it used to be pleasant 
to walk and watch the living inhabitants of the sea in 
the tide pools, there is now a thick crust of mussels, 
with a substratum some inches thick of soft mud, into 
which one sinks ankle ‘deep. ‘It is an interesting 
