PREFACE 



The study of life in the seas has a practical bearing on British 

 industrial supremacy that cannot perhaps be claimed for any 

 other branch of zoology, for the arts of the stock-breeder and 

 poultry-farmer have long since passed out of the domain of 

 the laboratory into that of technical education. In our sea- 

 fisheries, however, we have a great industry, already 

 marvellously developed during the past fifty years, and 

 capable, with proper care, of yet further growth and improve- 

 ment in the near future. More and more is the administra- 

 tion of this industry dependent on the researches of the 

 marine laboratory. The causes which lead to fluctuations in 

 the supply by prompting irregular and hitherto immeasurable 

 migrations of important fishes from one coast to another ; the 

 meaning of " over-fishing " and the nature of the measures 

 necessary for its control ; the difficulty in obtaining bait, — these 

 and other problems it is the business of the marine biologist 

 to solve. This, the fifth volume of the " Woburn Library," 

 makes no pretence to throw any new light on these matters. 

 All that has been attempted is to summarise the habits and 

 appearance, the distribution and the migrations of every fish 

 yet described as " British." Even before it is in the hands of 

 the public there may be new species in the British list, for only 

 while the last sheets were passing through the press our gobies 

 were enriched by the discovery in Cornwall of a species larger 

 than any hitherto admitted as belonging to this country. Too 

 late for insertion in the text comes information (in the 

 Journal of the Marine Biological Association^ December, 1903) 



