372 Mr. G. E. Dobson on « 
3 inch Jong; scales are now developed, but seem confined to 
the anterior and ventral parts of the body. The vertebra are 
well ossified. 
Ewart and Matthews (8rd Ann. Rep.S8. F. B.) found a few 
herrings, 1} inch long, amongst the shoals of sprats forming 
the Forth Whitebait in January. From January we must 
pass to September, when the herring is found on the sands, 
about 24 inches long, in the usual company. It has now all 
the characters of the adult, external and internal, but is 
probably sexually immature. 
One specimen of the ee inches long was obtained 
in company with the last, and is probably a year older. 
‘The career of the young herring has now been traced from 
the spring of one year to the autumn of the next, and perhaps 
a year longer, with fair continuity, and its rate of growth 
noted. (Dr. Meyer was enabled to trace the growth of the 
herring of the Baltic both in confinement and under natural 
conditions for five months. He gives 65-70 millim. as the 
size of a five-months’ herring (Jrd Ann. Rep. 8. F. B. p. 50).) 
Of its subsequent proceedings the specimens here afford no 
evidence. It probably goes into deeper water. The record 
of autumn-hatched herrings is less satisfactory. Eggs came 
under my notice in the middle and end of August ; but, as 
pointed out by Prof. M‘Intosh and Mr. E. E. Prince (op. Gta) 
there must be considerable variability in the autumn 
spawning-period, some forms being hatehed perhaps in July, 
whilst others, as appears below, are but a few days old on the 
20th September. Incubation is shorter, as the temperature is 
higher, than in the spring. Eggs were hatched in this labo- 
ratory during this September in from seven and a half to 
eight and a half days. On Sept. 20 we found in midwater 
postlarval forms varying from 3, to $4 inch, that is, from 
afew days to a month old. In November 1888 we found 
them 3 mch long, and in March 1889, on the bottom, 12 
inch long. Beyond this I have not been able to trace them. 
LII.—Deseription of a new RBCS of Water-Shrew Jee 
Unalaska Island. By G. li. Dosson, M.A., F.RS 
THE type of the very interesting species of Water-SI irew 
about to be described * was found by me in the excellent 
-* This species would have been described, as I had hoped, long ago in 
the third part of my ‘ Monograph of the Insectivora ;’ but the state of 
my health having prevented the appearance of that part, I am anxious to 
obviate further delay by immediate publication of the following descrip- 
1K yn. 
