8 MARKETABLE BRITISH MARINE FISHES 



Agassiz devoted special attention to the subject, collecting the 

 floating eggs and young stages of fishes at Newport. But it 

 was not till 1882 that he published an account of these obser- 

 vations. He then stated that he knew from personal observation 

 that the eggs of the majority of kinds of American flat-fishes, 

 and many other fishes, floated in the water. In Europe the 

 fact that the eggs of flat-fishes are of the buoyant kind was 

 confirmed by a German naturalist, Victor Hensen, who traced 

 the eggs of the plaice and flounder in the neighbourhood of 

 Kiel, in the Baltic, in 1882. 



The study of floating spawn in this country commenced in 

 that part of it called Scotland in the year 1884. In that year 

 Professor Mcintosh was carrying on observations for the infor- 

 mation of the Royal Commission on beam trawling, and I myself 

 was working independently at Granton, near Edinburgh. Pro- 

 fessor Mcintosh observed the floating of the ripe, healthy eggs 

 of a large number of fishes, including the cod, haddock, whiting, 

 grey gurnard, common flounder, turbot, common sole, and lemon 

 sole, more correctly to be called lemon dab. The present writer 

 in 1885 and 1886 published figures and descriptions of the float- 

 ing eggs of cod, haddock, and whiting, and of the plaice, flounder, 

 dab and witch. Since that time more detailed knowledge has 

 been obtained. But in referring to the year 1884, it is interest- 

 ing to turn to the Report of the Commission above mentioned, 

 issued in 1885, and read how confident and universal were the 

 assertions made by the professional witnesses as to the destruc- 

 tion of fish spawn on the sea bottom by the beam-trawl. Even 

 as recently as 1893, one of the witnesses most experienced in 

 the fishing industry told the Select Committee on Sea Fisheries 

 that, in his opinion, plaice spawn sank, and only after it had 

 matured to a certain point began to lift from the bottom. 



The investigation of problems relating to the fisheries is not 

 of a kind to attract voluntary private effort. It does not promise 

 great individual rewards in the shape of either fame or fortune, 

 nor are the researches of that abstract philosophical kind which, 

 like virtue, are their own reward, and are therefore pursued for 

 their own sake with no ulterior object. The investigations of 

 Professor Allman and Professor Sars, which have been mentioned, 

 were undertaken at the instance of public authorities. But these 

 were special researches involving only temporary activity by a 



