NATURE 



Z7 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 1897. 



THE BREEDING OF SEA FISHES. 

 The Life-Histories of the British Marine Food-Fishes. 

 By W. C. Mcintosh and A. T. Masterman. Pp. 516. 

 (London : Clay and Sons, 1897.) 



THE pursuit of economic zoology has never been so 

 keenly taken up in this country as has the corre- 

 sponding aspect of botany. Whether it is that the 

 purely intellectual problems of zoology are relatively 

 more fascinating than those offered by the study of 

 vegetables, or owing to some more recondite reason, it 

 is certain that zoologists make less capital out of the 

 practical application of zoological science to human 

 needs than do the botanists. There is a fine field open 

 for an economic entomologist who has the energy to 

 avail himself of the endless variety of new material, in 

 the form of " noxious insects," which is almost daily 

 •discovered in our remoter colonies and tropical terri- 

 tories. The life-history of the animals which serve man 

 as food is another and equally important branch of 

 economic zoology. 



In so far as fishes are concerned, there is relatively 

 a good deal of activity among British zoologists in re- 

 gard to this matter. The explanation of this activity is 

 to be found in the fact that both the British and Colonial 

 Governments have instituted highly salaried " inspector- 

 ships" and " commissionerships " of fisheries, and there 

 is a chance that here and there a zoologist, who has 

 written a book on fishes, will be appointed to one of 

 these posts instead of the more usual needy politician 

 or poor relation of a peer. Moreover, since the great 

 Fisheries Exhibition of 1883, laboratories have been 

 organised at different points on the British coast, by 

 the aid of local or imperial funds, for the purpose of 

 obtaining that knowledge of the ways and habits of 

 marine food-fishes, which is a necessary preliminary to 

 legislation in regard to modes and times of fishing and 

 the general regulation of the fisheries industry. 



No one has been more active than Prof Mcintosh 

 of St. Andrews, in building up a sound scientific know- 

 ledge of the breeding and habits of marine food-fishes. 

 It is a matter for congratulation that he should have 

 determined to bring together the results of work done 

 under his auspices in a handy volume. He has ob- 

 tained the co-operation of an able young zoologist, 

 Mr. A. T. Masterman, and the result is a book which, 

 in many ways, resembles that recently published by 

 Mr. Cunningham on British marketable fishes (Mac- 

 niillan, 1896), but has its own distinctive character and 

 scope. The volume by Prof Mcintosh and Mr. Master- 

 man appears to be less directly addressed to the general 

 public than that of Mr. Cunningham, and is very 

 largely, as the authors state in their preface, founded 

 upon the large quarto memoir, by Mcintosh and Prince, 

 published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh. Other sources are, however, made use of, 

 and the researches of Cunningham and of Holt, who 

 carried out their investigations as officers of the Marine 

 Biological Association of the United Kingdom, are very 

 NO. 1450, VOL. 56] 



freely quoted. Recent investigations by German, French 

 and Italian naturalists are also duly noticed. The book 

 is thus (except for the lack of bibliographical references) 

 a valuable guide to the present stale of knowledge as 

 to the breeding of marine fishes, and by the profes- 

 sional naturalist will be found to serve in some respects 

 as a supplement to the book produced by Mr. Cunning- 

 ham under the direction of the Marine Biological 

 Association. 



A few words of criticism suggest themselves. The 

 matter brought together in such a book as the present 

 necessarily consists of a great variety of detail as to the 

 superficial appearance of many different species of 

 fishes at various stages of growth from the ^%%, as 

 well as of observations on the eggs themselves. It 

 is difficult to give any consistent form or purpose to 

 the exposition of such details, since morphology is not 

 the subject-matter of the treatise. Lithographic plates, 

 with many coloured figures, are used by the authors to 

 bring details of outline and colour before us. But it 

 must be admitted that at present the subject is in a very 

 primitive condition, when all or nearly all that we can 

 hope for is a disconnected series of observations. It will 

 be the work of later days, after a much greater number 

 of observations has been made, to bring the facts 

 together under larger and smaller generalisations. 



Under these circumstances it is surely a mistake of the 

 authors to say, as they do, that Mcintosh's and Prince's 

 " Researches " " may be said to have attempted for 

 Teleosteans what the lamented Frank Maitland Balfour 

 did for Elasmobranchs." The resemblance seems to me 

 to be absolutely wanting. Balfour described, by means 

 of sections, the cellular embryology of "an Elasmo- 

 branch," using only about six species, according to con- 

 venience, in his work. His object was not to describe 

 the superficial appearance of young Elasmobranchs of 

 all kinds, and he did not do it, or make any pretence of 

 doing it. His object was to trace the genesis of the organs 

 of the vertebrate body, and he made discoveries of funda- 

 mental importance for vertebrate morphology as to the 

 origin of the fins, the notochord, the somites, and the renal 

 organs. Mcintosh and Prince have not attempted any 

 work of the kind. They simply give figures of trans- 

 parent eggs and larvte of Teleosteans ; and whilst thus 

 adding to the observed material of " natural history," 

 can not be said, any more than can the authors of the 

 present volume, to have arrived at a single conclusion of 

 importance to morphology, or to have worked with either 

 the technical methods or the scientific aim of Frank 

 Balfour. 



Although one must maintain that such work as that 

 recorded in the present book, and in the " Researches " 

 of Mcintosh and Prince, differs in every way from that 

 done by Balfour for Elasmobranchs, one does not imply 

 that it is not useful and excellent work of its kind — 

 another kind. The morphology of the Teleostean as 

 determined by embryology is a much more laborious 

 task than the sketching of pigment-spotted embryos, 

 and has been but very partially attacked as yet ; though 

 Grassi, Ryder, Harrison and others have carried on the 

 work of the older observers in regard to such important 

 points as the vertebral column and fin-skeleton. 



In their preface the authors say that the life-history of 



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