SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 165 



Herdman,* on the occurrence and distribution of the 

 commoner food fishes on the principal inshore and offshore 

 grounds of the Lancashire District. From time to time 

 selections from the results so obtained have been published 

 either in the Superintendent's Reports or in those of this 

 Laboratory. In the autumn of 1899 it was thought 

 advisable to make a study of all the data obtained, and as 

 a result all the forms (over 1,000) containing the records 

 of the observations have now been abstracted. 



These observations were made by the Captain and crew 

 of the " John Fell " and by the bailiffs in charge of the 

 sub-districts, and are as complete as the police work and 

 other administrative duties of the officers permitted. 

 They include experimental hauls with fish-trawl nets of 

 various sizes and made under various conditions, hauls 

 with shrimp trawls and shank nets, and observations on 

 the sizes, spawning, feeding, &c, of the common food 

 fishes. On account of the limited staff employed, the 

 extent of the district to be worked over and the pressure 

 of the police work, these statistics are necessarily very im- 

 perfect. It would be premature to publish many of the 

 data obtained, especially those of the fish-trawl, at 

 present, and we therefore confine ourselves to what seems 

 most complete and reliable, viz., the series of experimental 

 hauls with shrimp-trawl nets made by Mr. G. Eccles, head 

 bailiff for the Southern District, on the Mersey Shrimp- 

 ing Grounds. 



It would not serve any useful purpose to publish the 

 results of these hauls as recorded by Mr. Eccles in full, 

 so we have prepared an abstract of all the data collected 

 and present it in the form of Tables I. to YI. Altogether 

 248 hauls with a shrimp trawl were made during the 

 period 1893-1899. By far the greatest number of these 

 * Lancashire Sea Fisheries Laboratory Report for 1892, pp. 41-45. 





