Bihliographical Notices, 401 



made sorao instructive observations in St. Andrews Bu)'. He care- 

 fully noted the fauoal monthly changes for a year, eliciting that, 

 wintt-r or sununtT, swarms of i>lant .md animal surface orf^Mnisms 

 ahoiinded. May was the maxiniiun, January the niininiuni, and 

 June, July, and August high in pelagic life. His researches, com- 

 prising surface, mid-water, and ground fauna prevalent in the hay 

 at stated periods, to a limited extent only corroborate those of the 

 praiseworthy 'Plankton' Atlantic Expedition. The method em- 

 ployed by him, less minute and systematic, but nevertheless fairly 

 satisfactory for practical purposes, ditfercd from that of Henson, and 

 gave no warrant to this savant's mathematical apportionment and 

 supposed uniformity of the ' Plankton ' : the essence of the former's 

 research, derived from superficial, mid, and ground netting, tending 

 rather to prove that trawling of inshore waters cannot dcjjrive 

 food-tishes of nourishment by rendering the sea-bottom barren, as 

 some authors haveasserted. Withal it truly corresponded to Hajckel's 

 expression of a " Woiidi-rland" in his 'Plankton Studien,' and 

 rather sustains Ilieckers views of the continuous variation of the 

 surface organisms monthly, daily, and even hourly ; hence he 

 arrives at a conclusion opposed to that of Hcnsen, viz. that rigid accu- 

 racy is out of the (jucstion in such a biological problem. Garstang at 

 Plymouth and Peck in the United States have each essayed on the 

 same lines as il'Intosh, and there is every promise, Avhen our bays, 

 inlets, and estuaries are better worked out, that some at least of 

 the inshore fish migrations will be more thoroughly understood, 

 and theoretical as well as practical results follow. 



In the " General Sketch of Marine Telcostcan Development " 

 what lialfour did for Elasmobranchs has been done in the Tcleosts, 

 and is here given in '• a brief and somewhat popular resume," 

 quoting the authors' own words. The same is chiefly based on 

 M'Intosh and Prince's monograph (Trans. Hoy. Soc. Edinb. 1890), 

 The present authors have, as a rule, eliminated controversial dis- 

 cussion or reference to the special labours of others' investigations, 

 limiting their treatment of the subject as much as possible to the 

 presumed facts of the ease as tolerably well agreed on. In this 

 way they have given a succinct but uuusnall)' clear scientific 

 account of the processes involved from fertilization to ultimate 

 hatching and issue of the embryo onwards, through larval and post- 

 larval conditions to adolescence. Therefrom the student can easily 

 follow the changes step by step, and finish with definite ideas of 

 the cell-division, origin of membranes and organs, whether derived 

 from epiblast, mesoblast, or hypoblast. The whiting and cod are 

 the types taken, with woodcuts, to illustrate the gradation of 

 changes in their embryology. 



The authors tell us " very little is definitely known in connexion 

 with the rate of growth of food-fishes.'' This statement rather 

 takes us aback, for we were of opinion that, as Cunningham puts it, 

 " a considerable amount of evidence has been collected bearing upon 

 the question of the growth of fishes." Are the researches of Fulton, 



