»f 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 511 
nection with the study of the food fishes, upon the establishment of a 
Marine Biological Station on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and 
upon the co-operation with the Government of the United States in an 
international Commission, from whose labours much may be expected. At 
the same time, the members of the section are of the opinion that further 
and more extensive efforts in all these directions are urgently needed if 
certain of the fisheries, notably that of the Pacific salmon, are to be main- 
tained, even at their present condition of productiveness. For the framing 
of satisfactory and effective regulations for the utilisation and conservation 
of the food fishes, a complete knowledge of their life-history is absolutely 
necessary, and the section desire to impress on the Governments concerned 
the immediate need for an extensive prosecution of investigations along 
this line, for greater facilities for the scientific study of the fisheries, espe- 
cially those of the Pacific coasts, and for a continued co-operation of the 
Dominion Government with the Governments of the Provinces and also 
those of the United States in all efforts looking towards the conservation 
of the fisheries, one of the most valuable natural resources of Canada. 
2. Autonomy in the Crustacea. By Dr. J. Prarson. 
38. On the Distribution of Fresh-water Eels. By Dr. Scumipt. 
Leaving aside the interesting question how far eels penetrate at different 
places into the land through the rivers, the distribution in the regions close 
to the coast has been principally considered. In working out this distribu- 
tion of the genus Anguilla, throughout the world, only that part which 
treats of the Atlantic species is so far completed. Though uni- and vari- 
coloured species are found in the Indian and Pacific regions, only two 
uni-coloured species, A. vulgaris (Tart.) and A. chrysypa (Raf.), occur in 
the Atlantic region, the former in the eastern, the latter in the western part. 
Fresh-water eels are lacking on the Pacific shores of South and of North 
America, and on the Arctic coasts. On the western Atlantic shores they 
are found from the southernmost part of Greenland, at Labrador and eastern 
Canada, along the coasts of the United States and Mexico, the West- 
Indian Archipelago and Guiana. 
They are absent from the southern coast of the Caribbean Sea and from 
the coasts of South America south of Guiana—z.e., in the large river- 
systems of Brazil and Argentina. On the east boundary of the Atlantic 
they are lacking on the north coast of Asia and Russia, but are found 
from North Cape southwards along the coasts of Europe, on all the coasts 
of the Mediterranean—the Black Sea excepted—and on the north-western 
part of the African coast. Here they disappear from the region of the 
Rio del Oro, and are absent from all the west coast of Africa—i.e., in the 
large river-systems of the Niger and the Congo. In South Africa, near 
Cape Agulhas, we again meet fresh-water eels, also on the east coast of 
Africa as far north as Somaliland (whether they are found at the coast 
of the Red Sea and South Arabia cannot be stated with certainty) ; further, 
at the south coast of Asia and on the islands in the Indian Ocean. The 
relation between the Anguilla species occurring here (among which there 
are one-coloured as well as vari-coloured), and the Atlantic A. chrysypa and 
A. vulgaris has not yet been fully ascertained. 
Besides, the two Atlantic fresh-water eels occur in the oceanic islands: 
Bermudas—Iceland, the Faroes, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries—and, 
what deserves especially to be pointed out, they are found on islands where 
other fresh-water fishes are completely lacking: They are not to be found 
en the Cape Verde Islands, nor on any of the oceanic islands south of the 
Equator. 
