262 Notes and Comments. 



of William Smith from the plate appearing as frontispiece 

 to Phillips' Memoirs published in 1844. The artist has 

 apparently not been personally familiar with Smith, and has 

 made him much more tall and slender than that gentlemen 

 existed in real life. Beneath the portrait is a facsimile of 

 his signature, which is quite typical. 



A NORTH SEA MARVEL'. 



Under the above perfectly correct heading, the Hull press- 

 publishes the following note : — ' During the war the waters, 

 off the coast of Denmark, in which fishing could be carried 

 on without danger, were overfished, and it was ascertained the 

 area would be practically depopulated of fish. Dr. Petersen^ 

 of the Danish Fisheries Board, has discovered that, though 

 the intensive fishing practically exterminated the old type 

 of fish. Nature, in her eagerness to keep pace with the depletion 

 caused by intensive trawling, has actually created a new species 

 of plaice, which is quick growing, lusty, and nearly double the 

 weight of its predecessors.' 



DR. W. H. PEARSALL. 



Readers of The Naturalist will be glad to join us in sincerely 

 congratulating one of the secretaries of the Yorkshire Natur- 

 alists' Union, Mr W. H. Pearsall, on his receiving the degree 

 of Doctor of Science from the Manchester University, for 

 his work on the Vegetation of the English Lakes. Of this 

 work ' The Aquatic Vegetation of the English Lakes ' ap- 

 peared in The Journal of Ecology, Vol. VIII, and ' The 

 Development of Vegetation in the English Lakes considered 

 in relation to the General Evolution of Glacial Lakes and 

 Rock Basins.' was read before the Royal Society recently, 

 and will appear in their Proceedings in due course. The 

 remainder still awaits publication. 



THE YORK MUSEUM. 



The Annual Report of the Yorkshire Philosphical Society 

 for 1920 has recently appeared, and besides the usual references 

 to the progress of the institution, are some illustrated notes 

 on Later Tertiary Invertebrata, by Alfred Bell. In this Mr, 

 Bell revises a general synopsis of the Crustacea and Echin- 

 odcrmata of the Upper Tertiaries which he put before the 

 Society in 1891. In the general report, reference is made to 

 the fact that the York Museum really began by the necessity for 

 finding of a home for the Mammalian Remains from Kirkdale 

 Cave, and a similar collection from the same cavern found 

 its way to Hull and has been on exhibition there since about 

 1822, the date of the foundation of the York Society. A 

 recent visit to the York Museum indicates that the institution 

 is being thoroughly overhauled by the new curator. Dr. 

 CoUinge. 



Naturalist 



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