RESEARCH ON BIOLOGY. ETC. 363 



owing to the fact that the members are scattered throughout New 

 Zealand, advantage has been taken by individual members of the 

 opportunities offered by other expeditions, and a considerable 

 amount of useful work has thus been carried out. Full reports, 

 withstatementsof accounts, were sent in to the Adelaide meeting in 

 1907, and to the Brisbane meeting in 1909, and at each meeting 

 the committee was reappointed and the unexpended balance of 

 the grant reassigned to it. As the report sent in to the Brisbane 

 meeting has for some reason not been printed in the records of that 

 meeting, it will be desirable to include in the present report an 

 account of all the work that has been done since the report presented 

 to the Adelaide meeting, and printed in the report of that meeting 

 on page 288. 



The most important work was that carried out in connection with 

 the " Nora Niven " trawling expedition, fitted out by the New 

 Zealand Government in 1907, for the investigation of the marine 

 fisheries of New Zealand. Mr. Waite, a member of the Committee, 

 accompanied the " Nora Niven " and made collections of as many 

 of the different groups of the marine animals as possible, and duly 

 recorded the soundings, nature of the sea bottom, etc., at all the 

 different stations, and in this manner a large amount of information 

 was gained with regard to the sea bottom immediately around New 

 Zealand. A general account of the " Nora Niven " expedition is 

 given by Mr. Waite in the Records of the Canterbury Museum, vol. I. , 

 No. 2, and in the same publication there are reports by different 

 authors on some of the collections made. Other groups have since 

 been worked out, and a full list of the papers dealing with these, 

 together with other papers arising from the work of the Committee, 

 is appended to this report. 



In November, 1907, an expedition was fitted out by the 

 Philosophical Institute of Canterbury to visit the subantarctic 

 islands to the south of New Zealand, and was accompanied by three 

 members of the Committee. During the expedition, additional 

 soundings and collections were made, the results of which have 

 been published in detail in the papers by different authors in the 

 *' Subantarctic Islands of New Zealand," two vols., issued December 

 22nd, 1909. The one bearing most directly with the work of the 

 Committee is the report on the Foraminifera by Mr. F. Chapman. 

 The material was obtained mainly from one or two dredgings 

 between the Auckland Islands and New Zealand, and Mr. Chapman's 

 report deals with 168 species, of which 103 species are new to the 

 New Zealand region. A number of forms belonging to the other 

 groups of animals were obtained by the dredgings taken during the 

 expedition and are included in the reports by the various authors. 



In December, 1908, two members of the Committee, accom- 

 panied a party consisting mainly of members of the Canterbury 

 College staff, on a short trip to the West Coast Sounds of New 

 Zealand, and a number of dredgings were obtained during this 

 trip ; the Foraminifera and smaller forms obtained have not yet 



