(atin) 
NOTES FROM THE MILLPORT MARINE BIOLOGICAL 
STATION. 
By Ricuarp Eumurrst, F.L.S. 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE BeHaviour or F1suH. 
WseEn fish are caught and brought into captivity they are 
very wild and shy and their behaviour is very different from that 
of tame fish which have lived in aquaria for several months; it 
is interesting to trace the fish’s behaviour between these two 
extremes. Most fish have an instinctive* fear of all moving 
objects above a few inches in size other than members of their 
own shoal. Saithe (Gadus virens) often gather in dense shoals 
among and around the piles of Keppel and other piers in this 
district, yet massed together as they are they detect and avoid 
anyone creeping on the cross-piles, and are not easily caught by 
means of a landing-net. The reason for their fear of strange 
objects, both in and out of the water, is not far to seek. Any- 
thing coming in among them may be a diving Shag, Cormorant, 
or Guillemot, a Porpoise, Whale, or some large predatory fish. 
Shags account for a great number of fish—for instance, one 
which had been feeding near this station for about an hour and 
a half when shot contained seven Gasterosteus spinachius, forty- 
one Gobius flavescens, half one Labrus bergylta, seven inches long, 
one Ctenolabrus rupestris, and half a five-inch Saithe; another 
specimen, shot some weeks later, contained six Pholis gunnellus, 
two Labrus, species unrecognizable, seventeen Gobius, and some 
Gadoid remains. When small shoals of Saithe or Lythe 
(G. pollachius) are playing at the surface, a Gull passing close 
over them causes the shoal to break up and go down, often with 
considerable splashing in their endeavours to get away quickly ; 
* “The discrimination between reflex and instinctive actions is chiefly 
conventional. In both cases we have to deal with reactions to external 
stimuli or conditions. But while we speak of reflex actions when only a 
single organ or group of organs react to an external stimulus, we generally 
speak of instincts when the animal asa whole reacts. In such cases the . 
reactions of the animal, although unconscious, seem often to be directed 
towards a certain end.’’—Loeb, ‘Comparative Physiology of the Brain,’ 
palit, 
