48 I RANSACTIONS LlVEEPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



artificially in sea-fish hatcheries, and so may be kept and 

 protected during the first few days or weeks of their 

 existence when they would otherwise be exposed to 

 innumerable enemies in the surface waters of the ocean. 



Hu1 it cannot be too emphatically stated, and widely 

 made known, that sea-fish hatcheries ought not to be 

 merely for 1 lie purpose of hatching young fish and then 

 setting them free in the sea. Hatch//)// and Reari/i// of 

 fish is the end to have in view, and scientific men who 

 have charge of fish hatcheries will not be content till 

 they have succeeded in rearing into young fish, at a 

 reasonable cost, a large proportion of the fry which they 

 can now hatch from the eggs by the million. Professor 

 (i. 0. Sars first showed how the egg^ of an edible lisli 

 (the Cod) could be hatched in small numbers a v s a labora- 

 tory experiment; Dannevig in Norway and the U.S. Fish 

 Commission in America have devised the apparatus and 

 technique by which it has become possible with very slight 

 mortality to hatch out such eggs on an industrial scale 

 by hundreds of millions. The next advance must be in 

 rearing. At present practical difficulties block the way, 

 bwi the Fishery Board for Scotland has had some success 

 with Plaice, and the French at Concarneau with the Solo. 

 and we cannot doubt that further investigation and 

 experience will show us the best methods to pursue. It 

 is at institutions like this at Fort Erin, where a Scientific 

 Laboratory is combined with the Hatchery, that experi- 

 ments in feeding and aeration can be carried out which 

 will eventually lead us to the successful rearing of the 

 young fish that we now hatch and distribute as fry. 



[nspection of the £s t ew Station. 



On account of the delay in the completion of the 

 large spawning pond (which had caused the Hatchery 



