568 REPOHT— 1886. 



Report of the Committee, consisting of Professor Cleland, Professor 

 McKendeick, Professor Ewart, Professor Stirling, Professor Bower, 

 Dr. Cleghorn, and Professor McIntosh (Secretary), appointed 

 for the purpose of continuing the Researches on Food-Fishes 

 and Invertebrates at the St. Andrews Marine Laboratory. 



■The Committee beg to report that the sum of 751., placed at their dis- 

 posal, has for the most part been expended in the purchase of instruments 

 and books permanently useful in the Laboratory, only a limited proportion 

 having been disbursed for skilled assistance. 



Since the meeting of the Association at Aberdeen last year several 

 structural improvements in the wooden hospital, now converted into the 

 Laboratory, have been completed, and others are being carried out by the 

 Fishery Board for Scotland. These changes will render the temporary 

 building much more suitable for work. A small yawl of about 21 feet in 

 length has also been added to the apparatus by the Fishery Board. The 

 desiderata now are an increase in the number of good microscopes and 

 other expensive instruments, and an addition to the nucleus of books 

 which workers require always at hand. In this respect the Laboratory 

 has been much indebted to the Earl of Dalhousie, who forwarded a com- 

 plete set of Fishery Blue Books, and to the Trustees of the British 

 Museum, who sent their publications relating to marine zoology. 

 Collections of papers have also been forwarded by many observers, 

 amongst whom Professor Flower, the late Dr. Gwyn JeflTreys, and Pro- 

 fessor Alexander Agassiz are conspicuous. Most of the Continental and 

 American workers in marine zoology and cognate subjects, as well as 

 those of our own country, are indeed represented. 



The first work of the year was the examination of a fine male Tunny, 

 9 feet in length, caught in a beam-trawl net near the mouth of the Forth, 

 and the skeleton of which is now being prepared for the University 

 Museum. Various interesting anatomical features came under notice, and 

 its perfect condition enabled a more correct figure of its external appear- 

 ance to be made (vide ' Ann. Nat. Hist.' April and May 1866 and ' Fourth 

 Report of the Fishery Board for Scotland,' plate viii.) The examina- 

 tion of various food- and other fishes in their adult and young conditions 

 was systematically carried out, and notes on the following species will be 

 found in the ' Annals of Natural History,' and the ' Report of the Fishery 

 Board' : — Weever (greater and lesser), shanny, sand-eel, halibut, salmon, 

 common trout, herring, sprat, conger, ballan-wasse, shagreen-ray, piked 

 dog-fish, and porbeagle-shark. Special attention was also given to the 

 ' Mode of Capture of Food-Fishes by Liners,' ' Injuries to Baited Hooks 

 and to Fishes on the Lines,' ' Shrimp-Trawling in the Thames,' ' Sprat- 

 Fishing,' and to the ' Eggs and Young of Food- and other Fishes,' 

 ' Diseases of Fishes,' the ' Effect of Storms on the Marine Fauna,' and 

 ' Remarks on Invertebrates, including Forms used as Bait.' ' 



The active work in connection with the development of fishes for the 

 season may be dated from the middle of January, when one of the local 

 trawlers captured a large mass of the ova of one of the food-fishes, viz., 

 the catfish (Anarrhichas lupus, L.). The embryos in these eggs (which 

 are the size of the salmon's) were well advanced, so that with the excep- 



> Vide "Fourth Eeport of the Fishery Board for Scotland,' 1886. 



