COUNCIL — JULY 1905 — APPEND. CG 48 
the landings each month, if numerous (see Table I), might be considered very 
approximately representative. Where the plaice are sold in classes, however, as 
“large”, “medium” and “small”, as in Holland, England and some of the German 
ports, one of the difficulties met with is, that these classes cannot be sharply 
defined, the class “small” containing a certain proportion of fish which belong to 
the “medium” and vice versa. If it be desired to ascertain the proportion of plaice 
under 31 cm. (12 ins.) or 35 cm. (14 ins.), for example, it would be necessary to 
have measurements to represent both the medium and small classes. 
As a general rule the class “medium” does not contain plaice under 31 cm. 
(12 ins.) in length, so that if we wish to ascertain the quantities of plaice landed 
under say 25 to 26cm. (10 ins.), it is sufficient to have measurements of the class 
“small”. The difficulty in this case is, that the class “small” does not have the 
same composition, when the fish comprising it come from different areas or are 
taken in different months. Thus, the class “small” from Iceland is of a larger 
average size than the same class from the North Sea, and a larger proportion of 
the smaller sizes enter into the catches of the summer months than into those of 
the winter months. The obvious conclusion from this is, that each area and each 
month must be dealt with separately. 
The North Sea has been taken as a single area in this report and the 
assumption has been made, that the class “small” has the same composition over 
the whole area. This is by no means certain, however, especially in the case of 
England. The measurements received. from that country refer almost exclusively 
to plaice from the so-called Eastern Grounds, and it has been assumed that these 
measurements also represent the composition of the “small” plaice landed from all 
other parts of the North Sea. It would clearly be more satisfactory, however, to 
have separate measurements for these other regions. 
Again, the data for the different months have been combined for the present, 
for various reasons: either the measurements did not represent the whole year, or 
the statistics of the total quantities were not available for the same months for 
which measurements had been received, or the monthly data were entirely lacking 
and so on. The particular difficulties and the way in which they have for the 
moment been overcome can be seen from the various tables. 
In order to deal with each month separately, it will be necessary ato have 
data of the total quantities, as well as measurements, for each month of a com- 
plete year and for each country. 
Further difficulties in the way of obtaining representative material also occur 
in the choice of samples on the market, number of samples and so on, but these 
