lO MARKKTAHLK liRITlSH MARINE FISHES 



some most searching and fruitful investigations into the history, 

 habits, and breeding of the herring. The several branches of 

 the research were taken up by different investigators — one 

 studied the breeding grounds, and the conditions of the develop- 

 ment and growth ; another, the development of the egg from 

 the microscopical point of view ; another, the question of the 

 varieties of the herring. The results were published in complete 

 and full}- illustrated memoirs, and these form the richest store 

 of knowledge concerning the herring which is up to the present 

 time in existence. In more recent years the Reports have dealt 

 with various matters connected with the science of the sea, but 

 have not had so direct a bearing on the history of particular 

 food -fishes. 



In the >-cars between 1870 and 1880, little or nothing was 

 done in this country towards the elucidation of the history of 

 sea-fishes. The amount of knowledge of the subject which was 

 available at the end of this period, and just before the com- 

 mencement of the systematic and special investigations which 

 have been carried on in recent years, can be ascertained by the 

 examination of three general summaries which were published 

 at that time, and of which a brief review may be here given. 



In the }-ear 1878 the celebrated Frank Buckland and 

 Mr. Spencer Walpole, at the time Inspectors of Fisheries for 

 England and Wales, under the Home Office, were specially 

 commissioned by the Home Secretary to make inquiries into 

 questions relating to the fisheries. They published a Report in 

 1879 which, in consequence of the fact that one of the Com- 

 missioners had long made a special study of the subject in 

 question, is of greater value than the majority of blue books. In 

 this Report Mr. Buckland gives in two Appendices a summary 

 of all that was known at the time, so far as he could discover, 

 concerning the lives and habits of our commercially valuable 

 sea-fishes. In the Report the following statements are found : — 

 " The greatest ignorance prevails about the habits of sea-fish. 

 Speaking generally little is known of the seasons in which the}' 

 spawn, of the places in which they cast their spawn, and still 

 less of the time which the spawn after it is cast takes to vivif}^ 

 Nobody, so far as we have been able to ascertain, has ever seen 

 the eggs of soles, turbot, plaice, and other like fish after their 

 extrusion under natural circumstances from the parent fish. A 



