MODERN INVESTIGATIONS OF THE SUBJECT 17 





for biological observations and experiments, and a small wooden 

 laboratory on the shore of Cromarty Firth on the east coast of 

 Scotland. Thus at the beginning of 1885 the Board had no 

 less than four marine stations for investigation, besides the 

 resources of the Natural History Department of Edinburgh 

 University. 



The investigations carried on in 1884-85 were principally 

 observations on the spawning of herring and cod at Rothesay. 

 These observations were published in the Board's Third Annual 

 Report for 1884. A number of cod were observed spawning in 

 March in the Rothesay Aquarium, and the eggs were found 

 floating at the surface of the tanks ; the fish merely swam about 

 at random while shedding the eggs and milt. The same Report 

 contains an account of the Marine Laboratory at St. Andrews, 

 and work done there, the latter consisting of observations on the 

 eggs of the viviparous blenny and other useless fishes, and on 

 the eggs of the herring, the young of the ling, of the eel, and of 

 cod. Mr. Brook contributes some notes, the most important of 

 which is a short paragraph stating that certain eggs, sent by 

 fishery officers attached to zoophytes, were not herring eggs. In 

 the Second Report of the Board such eggs were figured as those 

 of the herring, and important conclusions drawn from their 

 occurrence as to the period during which herring were spawning 

 on the East of Scotland. It is necessary to note this and other 

 errors and their rectification, as showing the ignorance of essential 

 facts which has obtained, and the need of patient research 

 and experience for the gradual attainment of trustworthy 

 information. 



In the same year 1884 was opened a Marine Station on a 

 small scale at Granton, near Edinburgh. The origin of this 

 enterprise was the grant to the Scottish Meteorological Society 

 of the surplus money from the Edinburgh Fisheries Exhibition 

 of 1882. At the time both that society and the Fishery Board 

 were anxious to carry on scientific investigations into questions 

 affecting the sea fisheries. The Granton Station was organised 

 and governed by Dr. John Murray, subject to the approval of 

 the Scottish Meteorological Society. The establishment con- 

 sisted at first of a small floating laboratory and a steam yacht, 

 the Medusa, fifty-one feet in length. For some years, besides 

 Dr. Murray himself, four scientific observers worked for this 



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