MODERN INVESTIGATIONS OF THE SUBJECT 3 1 



of a special manager, but subject to the supervision of the 

 Superintendent ; (3) the laboratory at St. Andrews, where Pro- 

 fessor Mcintosh and a succession of pupils and assistants from 

 the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh carried on the 

 more purely zoological researches. Special investigations of the 

 physics of the sea, circulation of water, density, temperature, &c., 

 were also carried on by experts not on the permanent staff of 

 the Board, on H.M.S. Jackal, commissioned to perform fishery 

 service. 



During the years 1893 and 1894 Mr. Holt continued to work 

 in the service of the Marine Biological Association at Grimsby, 

 and the staff of the Laboratory at Plymouth. Much of the 

 work had reference to the question of the capture and destruc- 

 tion of immature fish, to which attention was still more strongly 

 drawn by the appointment in 1893 of a Select Committee of the 

 House of Commons to inquire into it. Mr. Holt's Report in the 

 Journal giwes extensive statistics of the number of immature and 

 mature fish of certain kinds brought to the Grimsby market. 

 At Plymouth I was largely occupied in studying microscopically 

 the development of the egg in the roes of fishes, and the con- 

 dition of the roe before and after spawning, in order to obtain a 

 more complete knowledge of the various conditions seen in 

 different individuals at different times of the year. I also spent 

 much time in the endeavour to overcome the difficulty of rearing 

 the delicate newly-hatched young of food-fishes in confinement. 

 It is generally admitted that the benefit effected by merely 

 hatching the eggs and then consigning the larvae to the sea, is not 

 likely to be so great as that which might be secured by protect- 

 ing the young fish in their early and delicate stage. Various 

 papers on points connected with the natural history of fishes are 

 contained in the recent numbers of the Assocxd^iion's Journal. 



