May 28, 1885 | 
the year 1882 having been unusually eventful for the 
Commission. During that year the new ocean steamer 
Albatross was constructed, steps were taken towards 
founding a permanent station at Wood’s Holl, the Armory 
Building at Washington was fitted up as the central sta- 
tion of the Commission, and the surprising fact came to 
light that the tile-fish, investigated a short time previously 
by the Commission, had been practically exterminated 
by unknown natural causes. Besides the history of 
these events the Report contains a long and elaborate 
memoir, by John A. Ryder, on “ The Development of the 
Cod,” which forms one of the most conspicuous features 
of the volume, and some interesting papers on the artifi- 
cial propagation of the oyster: the rest of the volume is 
chiefly made up by the usual separate Reports of the 
various hatching-stations, and papers on American fishing 
industries. 
The appropriation made by Congress for the 4/batross 
in 1881 was too small, and it was not till March, 1882, 
that an additional grant was obtained, and the contract 
for her construction was signed. On November 11 the 
vessel was put into commission with Lieut. Z. L. Tanner, 
formerly commander of the Fzsk Hawk, as captain. On 
December 30 the A/éatross left Wilmington, where she 
was built, for Washington, on a trial trip. Her total dis- 
placement is 1000 tons. A description of the vessel and 
of her equipment is promised in a subsequent Report. The 
arrangements for establishing the principal permanent sea- 
side station of the Commission at Wood’s Holl made 
some progress during the year, but were not completed. 
An agreement was made upon the conditions of the pur- 
chase of the requisite land, and all the necessary techni- 
cal formalities arranged ; but it was essential that there 
should be constructed within the great harbour of Wood’s 
Holl an inner harbour, which would serve for a harbour 
of refuge as well as for the purposes of the Commission. 
An appropriation of 52,000/. for the new harbour was 
granted by Congress, but the President decided to defer 
action upon this and other new items in the harbour bill, 
and, consequently, the establishing of the Station was 
delayed for a time. Nevertheless, Wood’s Holl was made 
the head-quarters of the general summer work of the 
Commission, and a large party were engaged there during 
July and August working at marine zoology and explora- 
tion. The “isk Hawk was stationed there during this 
time. 
The central station at Washington was fitted up with 
shad-hatching apparatus, and was used as the centre 
from which all young shad hatched on the rivers Potomac 
and Susquehanna were distributed: the extreme limit of 
distribution was the Colorado river in Texas. The 
number of shad fry distributed was over 20,000,000. 
The curious history of the tile-fish (Lopholatilus 
chameleonticeps), into the distribution of which re- 
searches were made in 1881, is related in a report by 
Capt. Collins in Appendix B. At the beginning of 
Capt. Collins’s paper an account of the fish itself is 
given, from which we learn that it belongs to the family 
Latilide, Gill, the representatives of which are mostly 
inhabitants of tropical seas and of shallow water. The 
ground where the tile-fish had been found lies between 
the latitudes of Hatteras and Nantucket, in long. 70° to 
71°, about 100 miles off shore, at a depth of go to 125 
fathoms. In March and April, 1882, vessels arriving at 
the principal Atlantic sea-ports reported the extraordinary 
occurrence of vast numbers of large dead and dying fish 
floating on the surface of the sea over the region where 
the tile-fish had been found. It was ascertained that a 
large proportion of these dead fish were tile-fish. In 
order to determine the extent of the destruction, a steamer 
was chartered by the Fish Commission, and sent out to 
the tile-fish ground in September. Nota single Lopho- 
latilus could be obtained, but a new fish belonging to the 
genus Setarches was discovered, which promised to be of 
NATURE 
83 
importance as a food-fish. An account of this exploring 
cruise was published in the Fish Commission Szd/etin 
for 1882. 
Prof. Ryder’s memoir on the development of the cod 
is founded on researches made at Wood’s Holl, Mass., in 
June, 1881, and at Fulton Market, New York, in February, 
1882. On the former occasion an apparatus devised by 
Marshall MacDonald was used, and about 5000 young 
fry were set free at Wood’s Holl, and 25,000 sent to 
Chesapeake Bay and liberated there ; these were all the fry 
obtained from several millions of eggs artificially fertilised. 
The memoir is a long one, extending to more than 100 
pages, and is illustrated by twelve plates of woodcuts. 
This is the first publication in which the development of 
the cod has been described in detail and figured; the 
description given by Sars in his report to the Norwegian 
Government some years ago having been rather general, 
and not illustrated. The facts are given in Prof. Ryder’s 
paper for the most part with great accuracy and fidelity, 
although the appearance of the woodcuts is not very 
pleasing, and the more complicated of the figures are a 
little wanting in clearness. The theoretical part of the 
paper will not commend itself to those who have accepted 
the generalisations of embryology at present prevalent. 
For example, it is stated that in Teleosteans, at an early 
stage, the body-cavity and segmentation-cavity are con- 
tinuous; but the evidence produced in support of this 
revolutionary proposition is not by any means conclusive. 
It cannot be said that the obscurities of Teleostean 
embryology, such as the invagination of the gastrula, or 
the development of the genital ducts, are much illuminated 
by Prof. Ryder’s memoir: on the latter point no in- 
formation is given. 
Two other interesting papers are included in the 
Appendix for Natural History and Biological Research : 
one by Sidney J. Smith on the Decapod Crustacea from 
the dredgings of the A/éaéross in 1883, and the other by 
Prof. Verrill on the fauna of the tile-fish ground at the 
western edge of the Gulf Stream. The former of these 
is an extremely elaborate memoir, accompanied by ten 
plates of clear and well-executed woodcuts, illustrating 
species and structures which had not before been suffici-_ 
ently figured. The paper contains a great number of 
new species and several new genera: each new species is 
described with wonderful minuteness, and, a long table of 
measurements being added to each description, no one 
having occasion to use this memoir will be able to com- 
plain of inexactness or incompleteness in the characterisa- 
tion of specific distinctions. é ie 
The paper of Prof. Verrill is short, being simply !in- 
tended to indicate the most interesting features of the 
peculiar area investigated. It was found in the operations 
of 1882 that the invertebrate fauna, discovered to be so 
unusually abundant in 1881, had, like the tile-fish, suffered 
great destruction in the interval between the two seasons. 
This was especially the case among the Crustacea, some 
species, which had been taken in thousands at a single 
haul, having become extremely scarce. Prof. Verrill be- 
lieves the remarkable destruction of life had been caused 
by a very severe storm which occurred in the spring of 
1882, and which probably forced out the cold coast water 
over the Gulf Stream slope. 
The whole of Appendix D has reference to oyster 
culture. It contains six memoirs, two of which describe 
experiments on the artificial propagation of the American 
oyster, Ostrea virginica. Lieut. Francis Winslow studied 
the subject at Beaufort, N.C., and at Fair Haven, Con. ; 
Prof. Ryder at St. James’s Creek, Md. In both cases, 
though a fair amount of success was obtained in impreg- 
nating the ova and keeping the embryos alive in. the free- 
swimming stage, no satisfactory method was discovered 
of obtaining a supply of attached spat with any certainty. 
Prof. Ryder and Col. MacDonald on one or two occasions 
found that their embryos had fixed themselves to the sides 
