SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 457 



places that would be suitable, there would be the 

 formidable difficulty of conveying the mussels across the 

 estuary during rough weather in the winter months. On 

 the whole, Aberamfrach Harbour seems to be the most 

 suitable place, judging from a preliminary survey of the 

 estuary, which is, of course, all that I have been able 

 to undertake. This place has a muddy bottom, but it 

 might be possible to build concrete walls somewhere in 

 its vicinity, so as to make a tank which would only be 

 filled at high water. I do not know what the approxi- 

 mate cost of this would be; and, of course, the suggestion 

 of any site approved by an engineer would necessarily 

 mean an investigation by means of drift bottles, &c, as 

 well as salinity observations and bacteriological estima- 

 tions of the impurity of the water at all states of the tide 

 and various conditions of weather, before a definite 

 working scheme could be recommended. 



(4) The Ribble Mussel Beds. (Plate IV.) 



In consequence of some recent complaints, Dr. 

 Jenkins and I visited Lytham and inspected the mussel 

 bed in the Kibble Channel near there. Although I 

 visited the cockle beds both on the north and south sides 

 of the Kibble estuary in 1907, and the mussel bed at 

 St. Anne's in the previous year, this is the first occasion 

 on which the shellfish in the Kibble channel itself have 

 been examined. 



Plate IV. is copied from the latest and most com- 

 plete chart of the Kibble estuary, that made in 1904 as 

 the result of a survey carried out by Messrs. Barron and 

 Hainer. It shows the chaunel from Preston to near the 

 sea. The main channel is very narrow and shallow, and 

 it is being "trained" by rubble walls, in the hope that 

 it may break through to the sea and maintain, via the 



