February 20, 1908] 



NA TURE 



ilo 



IRISH FISHERY INI ESTIGATIONS.' 



THESE two volumes form the third and fourth 

 reports upon the scientific investigations into 

 fishery questions, which have been conducted for the 

 Irish department rt sponsible for the fisheries by Mr. 

 E. W. L. Holt, the scientific adviser. They fully 

 maintain the hig;h standard set by their two prede- 

 cessors both in the nature of their contents and in 

 the m.anner in which they are printed and illustrated. 



It is a matter for congratulation that the Irish 

 Government has adopted so comprehensive and in- 

 telligent a view of the manner in which such investi- 

 gations should be planned and carried out, and it is 

 to be hoped that any narrow and uninstructed 

 criticism, such as Mr. Holt appears to suggest has 

 been made upon the work, may not be allowed to 

 interfere in any way with its progress. " In my last 

 report," says Mr. Holt in the volume for 1904, " I 

 endeavoured to make it clear that the papers in the 

 appendix, even if couched in unavoidably technical 

 language, did actuallv contain information essential 

 to the possibilitv of success in attack on practical 

 fisherv questions. The endeavour seems to have 

 failed to some extent, but perhaps in the course of 

 time it may be more generally surmised that if a due 

 understanding of the minutia; of habit and environ- 

 ment is of some use in agriculture, so may it also be 

 in the direction of piscatorial enterprise, and that 

 because an .-mimal has an unfamiliar name it does 

 not necessarily follow that it is of no importance." 



The kind of criticism of which Mr. Holt here 

 appears to complam would seem to be similar to that 

 to which the work carried out by Prof. Herdman in 

 the Irish Sea has recently been subjected. .-Xt a 

 meeting last year of the Lancashire and ^^■estorn Sea 

 Fisheries Committee, a member of the committee, 

 the Rev. J. E. Green, is reported bv the Liverpool 

 Daily Post and Mercury to have said " he thought 

 they ought to manage to cut down the expense of the 

 annual report. The printing came to about yol. a 

 vear, and there was a quantity of verbiage in it which 

 was not easilv understood. For instance, they had 

 a long list of Latin names which he had taken the 

 trouble to trv and translate, with the assistance of 

 the latest work of Lewis and Short, but he had failed 

 to do so. If the names were to be inserted, the 

 translations should also be put bv the side, for they 

 were absolutely useless unless the Lancashire fisher- 

 men happened to be graduates of the Liverpool 

 University." 



The picture nf the diligent committeeman seeking 

 a translation of the specific names used by naturalists 

 " in the latest work of Lewis and Short " has its 

 humorous side. We fear his method might even 

 be somewhat misleading in the case of such a simple 

 specific name as [liiiiut sapiens. Both Mr. Holt and 

 Prof. Herdman must, however, take comfort from the 

 fact that the difficulty of making the general public, 

 or those who ha])pen to occupy positions of authority, 

 realise tiie importance of technical biological studi'-s 

 fs one which most scientific investigators have to face, 

 and for some linexplained reason is met with in a 

 particularly aggravated form in the case of fishery 

 work. 



Mr. Holt's report for 1904 is followed by six, and 

 that for (Q05 bv seven, appendices dealing with marine 

 work, whilst in each case one appendix is devoted to 

 inland fisheries. Of the former, one only deals directly 

 with fishes, that bv Holt and Byrne on the fishes of 

 the Irish Atlantic .Slope. This paper contains sixteen 



1 " Report on the Sea and Inland Fistieries of Ireland for 1Q04." Part ii. 

 .Scientific Investigation'!. Department of Agricultnre and Technical Inslrnc- 

 tion for Ireland- Ditto for 1005. (Dnbhn : Published for H.M Stationery 

 Office by .\- Thorn and Co., Ltd., 1906 and 1907.) Price 4s. 4,f and 2S. id. 



NO. 1999. VOL. yy] 



additions to the list of the fish fauna of the British- 

 and-Irish area, which have resulted from the opera- 

 tions of the fishery steamer Hclga. 



The Crustacea, a group which is of such great im- 

 portance from the point of view ofthe food of fishes, 

 receive considerable attention. Dr. W. T. Caiman 

 records lortv-eight species of Cumacea from the Avest 

 coast of Ireland, of which nine are new to science. 

 The latter are carefully described, and the details of 

 their external characters are illustrated in eighty-six 

 well-executed figures. 



Mr. Tattersall treats in a similar way the Isopoda 

 and pelagic .\mphipoda from the same region, ten 

 new species of Isopoda and four new species of 

 ."Xmphipoda being described and figured. Mr. Tatter- 

 sall and Mr. Holt add a supplement to their former 

 report on the Schizopoda, and Mr. Stanley Kemp 

 contributes a useful review of the Decapod genus 

 Acanthephvra. Miss Delap's notes on the rearing in 

 an aquarium of Aiirelia aurita and Pelagia perla are 

 also of great interest. 



The most important sections in the appendices on 

 inland fisheries are Mr. Holt's reports on the artificial 

 propagation of the Salmonidae and Mr. Hillas's record 

 of salmon-marking experiments. 



The two volumes make it clear that a very large 

 amount of most useful work is being carried out, the 

 value of which will increase at a very rapid rate as 

 the data accumulate from vear to year. 



NOTES. 

 In the House of Commons on Monday, Mr. Mallet asked 

 the Secretary of State ' for War whether he was aware of 

 the public service rendered by a commission of the Royal 

 Society, at the request of the War Office and the Admiralty, 

 in discovering the cause of Malta fever, from which many 

 hundreds annually of our soldiers and sailors on that 

 island until recently suffered ; and whether, in view of 

 the importance of this discovery in the annals of preventive 

 medicine. Inasmuch as at the present inoment the disease 

 had been entirely stamped out, he would consider the 

 desirability of giving the thanks of the Government to the 

 Royal Society for this instance of the successful applica- 

 tion of British scientific research? In his reply to this 

 question Mr. Haldane said: — "I am aware of the great 

 service rendered by the commission in question. The com- 

 mission's investigations and the adoption of preventive 

 measures as the outcome of its recommendations have 

 been followed by the practical disappearance of Malta fever 

 from the garrison of the Island. I think that the Royal 

 .Society is well aware how genuine is the appreciation of 

 the Government. We owe much to "the Royal Society's 

 commission for the successful Issue of this remarkable 

 investigation, and for the excellent results w-hich have 

 followed. These results illustrate the enormous Import- 

 ance of bringing science into our business of govermnent. " 



We announce with great regret that I^Ieutenant-General 

 Sir Richard Strachey, G.C.S.I., F.R.S., died on 

 February 12 at ninety-one years of age. 



The following have been elected honorary and foreign 

 members of the Chemical Society : — .\. E. J. Gautier, 

 Paris; A. Haller, Paris; J. W. Hittorf, Miinster ; J. .\. 

 he Bel, Paris ; H. L. Le Chatelier, Paris ; T. W. Richards, 

 Cambridge, Mass., U..S..\. ; and O. Wallach, Gottingen. 



The Paris .Academy of .Sciences has, says the Revue 

 Scienlifiquc, in cooperation with the Minister of Public 

 Instruction, undertaken, at the invitation of Sir Norman 



