U6 



Part HI. — Ta-eidietk Annual Hejyort 



I have already said the larger individuals are not duly represented in the 

 shrimp-net hauls from shallow water and this series was almost always 

 absent from the havils made on board trawlers. But in one case, when 

 it was present in numbers, the .same defect as in the Solway hauls was 

 apparent. An examination of the curves of the shrimp-net hauls 

 shows, however, that the averages for the end of July and for the end of 

 October indicate approximately the real increase. The distance between 

 the ordinates placed over the middle of the base of the first and second 

 groups in ten cases where the limits of the groups are pretty clearly 

 defined varies from about 5*8 to 7'2 cm., the mean being 6-6 cm. This 

 closely corresponds with the average length of the plaice in April, when 

 one year old, as shown above, and represents with approximate acciu-acy 

 the increase in length that takes place between the first and second series 

 in a year. 



In the last columns of the above Table I have given an amended mean 

 size derived from the median ordinate between the limits of the series. 

 The upper or maximum limit is not in all cases quite clear from the 

 occasional presence of fish belonging to the third series, but the averages 

 given, if they err at .all, err on the side of being rather large than 

 rather small. 



The particulars both for the first and for the second series show that 

 the plaice in the Solway grows more slowly than on the East Coast — 



