ON SCOTTISH MARINE FISHERIES. 379 
future of the Plaice is not without hope, and that the species 
will long continue to furnish the nations bordering on the North 
Sea with a valuable food. 
On the subject of the artificial hatching of marine fishes 
little more can be said than in 1907,* though the scientific super- 
intendent of the Scotch Fishery Board, Dr. Fulton, has since 
published the results of the transportation of larval Plaice to 
Loch Fyne (a long and narrow sheet of water) for a period of 
seven years, and contrasted the condition of the margin of the 
beach as regards young Plaice with the subsequent six years in 
which no larval Plaice were deposited in the loch. The fact that 
the captures of such young Plaice varied during the first seven 
years from 24 to 174 per hour, and in the second from 8 to 112, 
and, further, that the second highest capture occurred in the 
second period, when no larval Plaice were put in the loch, create 
a desire for further information as to methods, weather, and con- 
dition of the sea in the respective periods. The reporter of this 
experiment in Loch Fyne in 1908 did not give full weight to the 
wide distribution of the Plaice over the whole of the North Sea, 
and rested his argument for artificial hatching on the supposition 
that out of two or three millions of the ova of such a fish as the 
Cod “‘only two reproductive individuals survive.” Further, in 
dealing with the great diminution of larval and post-larval 
forms as contrasted with pelagic eggs in the tow-nets, no 
account is taken of the activity of the larval and post-larval 
fishes which from a very early stage avoid to a greater or less 
extent instruments of capture. If demersal fish-eggs like those 
of the Herring can produce larve in such prodigious quantities 
as to form a carpet for a considerable bay, in the midst of 
similar enemies to those of the pelagic forms, it is perhaps 
somewhat premature to place too much weight on the supposed 
enormous losses in the pelagic types, especially in estimating 
the value of hatcheries for marine forms. Again, the state- 
ment} that it is probable that 12,000 adult Plaice, living under 
natural conditions, would be required for the production of 
* First Lecture Roy. Instit. 1907, pp. 14 and 15, and including an allu- 
sion to the absence of any result of the artificial hatching after fifteen years’ 
work by the Scottish Board. 
+ Report S. F. B. xxvi. part. iii. p. 45, 1908. 
