— 138 — 
appear to furnish, in the first place, 
valuable testimony as to the re- 
liability of the method employed. 
When two samples, taken some 
6—700 km. apart, exhibit so great 
similarity in their compsition, in 
spite of the fact that they contam 
so many size and age groups, then 
it is highly probable that both 
have been taken from, and are 
truly representative of, one and 
the same stock. This probability 
is, moreover, placed almost beyond 
doubt by the results of the 
markingexperiments,whichproved 
that migration from Lofoten to 
Finmarken took place. 
The year class 1904. 
In both the samples here referred 
to, the highest percentage falling 
to any single year class was 45 %, 
this being the figure for the 9 year 
old fish, i. e., those spawned in 
1904. We thus arrive at the re- 
markable fact, that nearly half of 
both skrei and Finmark stock in 
1913 were fish of the 1904 year 
class, the same which has played 
so very important a part in the 
herring fishery of the last few years 
(see Chap. I). It would thus seem 
as if not only in the case of the 
herring, but also as regards the 
cod, the 1904 individuals were 
more numerous than those of 
other years. Before coming to a 
decision as to this, however, we 
must first see what can be as- 
certained from the samples avail- 
able as to this year class, and 
> compare the results obtained with 
4 À 6 f À 8 9 10 | | 12 18 the facts indicated by the fishery 
Fig. 90. Composition In ent of a of pi Sample statistics for these gears 
