MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATION AT PORT ERIN. 37 



attendance was secured. The Society arrived about mid- 

 day, and after luncheon at the Bellevue Hotel the party 

 assembled in the Biological Station, where the Director, 

 addressing the President, welcomed his party on behalf 

 of the L.M.B.C, reminded them of the objects of the 

 institution, and pointed out briefly the connection 

 between the work carried out there and the investigation 

 and conservation of the Manx fishing industries. The 

 President then replied in the name of his Society, thanked 

 the L.M.B.C. for their hospitality, and urged that the 

 attention of the Insular Grovernment should be drawn to 

 the fact that the recommendation of the Industries Com- 

 mission that a connection should be established between 

 the Government and the Port Erin Biological Station 

 had not yet been carried out. He then called upon Mr. 

 Isaac C. Thompson, who had consented to deliver the 

 address on this occasion. Mr. Thompson's subject was, 

 " The Place of Copepoda in Nature." 

 The lecture proved of deep interest, and also conveyed — 

 illustrated, as it was, by wall diagrams and by specimens 

 under microscopes in the laboratory — a large amount of 

 information as to the nature of the Copepoda, their place 

 in the animal kingdom and their utility and importance 

 to man. As reported in " Nature" (September 20th, p. 498), 

 the lecturer ''pointed out that the Copepoda are of the 

 utmost value as scavengers, as they live on the products of 

 decomposition, putrefaction, drainage matter, &c, and by 

 their internal laboratories convert refuse matter into most 

 valuable food material, some Copepoda constituting one 

 of the chief sources of food for some fishes, and so of man. 

 Mr. Thompson said that no less than 200 species have 

 now been found in Liverpool Bay. Their beautiful 

 organisation illustrates the truth that the wonderful 

 structure of some animals which can only be studied with 



