230 MARKETABLE BRITISH MARINE FISHES 



the west of Ireland onK- one ripe female was taken, and this 

 occurred at 10 fathoms in Kenmare river. In the Irish Sea, ac- 

 cording to Professor Herdman's observations ^ spawning flounders 

 were not found in March on the Bahama Bank, east of the Isle of 

 Man, 8 to 10 fathoms, but were found in abundance in the same 

 month in a place called the Hole, just beyond the ro fathom line. 

 No spawning fish were found in the Lancashire District within 

 the three miles limit, where the depths nowhere reach 10 fathoms ; 

 but it seems to me improbable that spawning flounders do not 

 occur in the proper season on that coast between the 10 and 20 

 fathom line. However the above summary of the evidence 

 available is sufficient to show that we have a fairly definite 

 knowledge concerning the dwelling places and movements of 

 the flounder. It dwells in estuaries ascending high up the rivers 

 and haunting the margins of the fluctuating tides in summer and 

 autumn, retreating to the deeper channels in cold weather, and in 

 February seeking the open sea in order to spawn, but not 

 travelling beyond the 30 fathom line, and about 10 miles from 

 the coast. It is not the character of the food on the outer ground 

 that attracts them, for they do not feed when ripe, and they 

 leave their usual hunting grounds behind them. There is 

 probably some physiological peculiarity in them which renders 

 the expulsion of the eggs difficult in the shallow brackish water, 

 and the female can only get relief from her burden in deeper, 

 Salter water. The pressure of the developing eggs probably 

 arouses the desire for greater pressure and greater saltness, and 

 so we get an idea of the instinct of migration in this case as 

 similar to the instinct of taking food to satisfy hunger, to relieve 

 a physiological discomfort. 



False notions concerning the breeding of flounders are very 

 common among fishermen. Shrimpers and fishermen who fish 

 in estuaries, and who are familiar with the wide expanses of mud 

 and sand laid bare at ebb tide in such places, usually believe 

 that the lumps of gelatinous spawn which abound over these 

 flats in the spring are the spawn of flounders and plaice. These 

 lumps are of difi'erent colours, some green, some pink, some 

 yellow. They are the spawn of the different kinds of marine 

 worms which inhabit the sand or mud, and have nothing what- 

 ever to do with fish. In Buckland's Report of 1879, this 



^ Report for 1S93 on the Lancashire Sea Fisheries Laboratory. Liverpool, 1894. 



