18 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Since my return from Port Erin, and, in fact, since 

 these notes were written in outline, I have noticed an 

 interesting paper by Ove Paulsen on the Biology of 

 Calanus finmarchicus in the waters round Iceland (Medd. 

 Komm. Havundersog. — Plankton L, 1906), in which he 

 comes to the conclusion that the shoals of herring around 

 Iceland and also the Northern cod fishery depend mainly 

 upon the distribution of Calanus. On account of the 

 difference of his results under varying conditions of 

 catching, he states that he has " discarded quantitative 

 measurements or countings of the material," and yet he 

 has given a very valuable paper, which shows, amongst 

 other points, such a marked irregularity in the distribu- 

 tion of the young and old Calanus that I fail to see how 

 anyone could deduce any definite conclusions as to the 

 numbers of that organism in the sea. 



In addition to the actual or relative numbers of 

 different organisms in the sea, there are many other points 

 that require consideration in connection with what some 

 people call the " metabolism " of the ocean, and one of 

 these points is the name metabolism. It is derived, of 

 course, from the Greek " metabole " (= change), and we 

 apply the term in biology to two such very different things 

 as the metamorphosis of an insect, and the series of 

 changes that take place in a living body intervening 

 between, and connecting, the ingestion of raw food 

 materials and the elimination of waste products. 



The changes of materials in the sea have no kind of 

 connection with the metamorphosis of an insect, but they 

 are to a limited extent analogous to the physiological 

 metabolism in the living body. Nitrogenous products, 

 for example, enter the sea as food stuffs, and can be traced 

 in various conditions through the bodies of various 

 organisms until, it may be, they leave the sea in the form 



