84 
history of the young stages in our district has still to be 
written. 
In our Report for 1900 (No. [X., p. 39), we had an 
article by Mr. Johnstone and Dr. Jenkins on the shrimp 
trawling statistics of the Mersey grounds, in which they 
give a description of this remarkable region, samples of 
various kinds of hauls and such conclusions as they were 
able to draw from an examination of our statistics (over 
1,000 forms) for the period 1895-99. 
The accompanying figure shows the great banks sur- 
rounding the mouth of the Mersey, and the channels 
between them. Shrimping is carried on over almost the 
whole of this ground, the extent of which is roughly 16 to 
18 square miles. This is only a sample of the remarkable 
Lancashire and Cheshire shrimping and nursery grounds. 
Similar areas exist in Morecambe Bay, off the Ribble, and 
in the estuary of the Dee, and on these grounds we find 
associated with the shrimp an abundant fauna of both 
fishes and invertebrates.” The chief fish are the plaice, 
dab, flounder, sole and solenette, with occasional whiting, 
haddock, cod, young brill and turbot, sprats, sand-eels and 
sting-fish. The commonest invertebrates are crabs, star- 
fish and shrimps. Examples of hauls on different nursery 
grounds, and at different times of year, are given in 
our ninth and tenth Reports, and in the Memoir, “ Fishes 
and Fisheries,’ by Mr. Dawson and myself, and need not 
be repeated here. Mr. Johnstone has summarised his 
previous work, from our statistics, as follows :— 
(1.) The great abundance of young flat-fishes on the 
shrimping grounds. They are, in order of frequency, 
dabs, plaice, and soles; solenettes are also very abundant, 
in some areas nearly as abundant as the soles. 
* See Herdman and Dawson, Lancashire Sea Fisheries Memoirs, 
No. Il. Fishes and Fisheries of the Irish Sea, 1902, 
