COMMITTEE B — DECEMBER 1903 (8) 
The task placed in the hands of the Committee was a partıcularly respon- 
sible one. The experience gained during the last year should, however, enable the 
Committee to define the scope of their work, especially for the next year or two, 
and to settle their plans and methods with greater precision than had hitherto 
been practicable. 
(1) As regards the work done during the past year, charts showing the 
positions of the trawling experiments carried out by the various countries with 
the commercial trawl during each quarter of the year had already been distributed 
among the members, together with a tabular summary. The first year had been 
spent in what might be considered a preliminary survey of the trawling grounds 
in general, consequently little or no regularity had been observed, generally 
speaking, in the investigation of particular grounds. 
Now that this preliminary survey had been completed, it would be advan- 
tageous to organize a fixed and definite scheme, so that grounds of particular inter- 
est and importance might be investigated regularly, periodically, and, as far as 
possible, with the same pattern of apparatus, so as to lead to results which might 
be accurately compared. 
(2) and (4) A series of comparative experiments had been carried out during 
the year by the “Huxley” in company with the vessels employed by Denmark, Ger- 
many, Holland and Scotland, in order to test the comparability of the trawling 
results obtained by the various vessels. A report upon the experiments had been 
distributed among the members. The otter trawls employed on the “Poseidon”, 
“Wodan” and “Huxley” were practically of the same size and pattern, but differed 
considerably in the weight of the ground rope. Consequently, as the experiments 
showed, the trawling results of these vessels were sufficiently similar as regards 
the selective action of the net upon the sizes of the fishes caught, but differed 
considerably in regard to the quantities caught of Pleuronectidae and of other 
species living upon or in the sandy grounds. The single trial between the “Gold- 
seeker” and the “Huxley” could not be regarded as a sufficient basis for conclusions. 
As regards the “Thor”, the comparative experiments showed that the medium- 
sized trawl employed by the Danish vessel not only catches a much smaller quan- 
tity of fish, but selects the various sizes of fish in different relative proportions as 
compared with the full sized trawls employed by the other vessels. 
These differences were of a serious character, since they not only precluded 
the possibility of any reliable combination of the trawling records of the various 
vessels for the scientific treatment of quantitative problems, but would impose great 
