WEST COAST OP SCOTLAND. 97 



prevailing N. and E. winds on the Arctic Seas, would reach 

 round past the S. end of Spitzbergen to the East Coast, and 

 would cause the unusually open sea there. But the main 

 channel of the Gulf Stream would still be towards the S.W., and 

 would afford the natural outlet for all manner of ocean life, 

 which requires certain temperatures ; and which, such as 

 Entomostraca, Copepodes, Molluscan larvae, &c, afford food 

 to other higher organisms. 



The great quantity of such food which in ordinary summers 

 and autumns accumulate around the shores of Spitzbergen, or in 

 the warm shallow summer seas off the N. coast of Europe, no 

 doubt retire to deeper water on the approach of winter. In 

 unusually cold seasons the retreat is continued, following the 

 course of the milder Gulf Stream until more temperate seas 

 are reached. 



In the course of its retreat it is discovered by vast shoals of 

 fish, which pursue these minute forms of life even to the 

 uttermost limits of its possible extension, up certain firths arid 

 inlets of our East Coast of Scotland. Naturally also the last 

 link of the migratory chain is taken up by the enormous popula- 

 tion of Gulls and other species of sea-fowl, as we know has been 

 the case in the winter of 1884-5 in the Firth of Forth. 



In the log of the steam whaler ' Eclipse,' Captain D. Gray 

 (see Report, antea, p. 7) in summer, repeated mention is made 

 of the unusual abundance of " whale food " in the Spitzbergen 

 seas, and I am indebted also to Captain Gray, through Mr. 

 Thomas Southwell, of Norwich, for a return of sea-temperatures 

 of the same seas. 



Mr. Hugh R. Milne, of the Marine Station at Granton, sends 

 me some temperatures taken from the Firth of Forth, extending 

 over June, 1884, to January, 1885, taken at three points, viz., 

 Isle of May, Queensferry, and near Alloa. These data, in 

 connection with the vast swarms of sprats or garvies (Clupea 

 sprattus) and the attendant thousands of Gulls, are useful for 

 future comparisons, and I append them here. It would be 

 interesting to know similarly taken temperatures of the Tay 

 Estuary, which was completely deserted this season by these 

 migratory fish, and consequently by the birds also. If we had 

 also means of knowing the temperatures of the Firth of Forth in 

 1872-73, when a similar vast migration of Sprats and Gulls was 



o 



