SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 153 
the young fish larve after hatching, Mr. Dawson and I 
visited in April the hatchery at Dunbar, an institution 
established by the Fishery Board for Scotland, and very 
similar to our own hatchery in equipment and in purpose. 
There we were shown, by Mr. Harold Dannevig, how the 
millions of young plaice were kept only a few days, or at 
most a week, and were then transferred to the upper parts 
of Lochfyne on the west coast—an operation which is 
conducted with very little loss. I sent a special report on 
the visit to Dunbar to the Chairman in April, and this 
was printed as an appendix to Mr. Dawson’s quarterly 
report in June. Many of the little details we saw at 
Dunbar may be useful to us in our further work at Piel. 
Although it was Mr. H. Dannevig at Dunbar who had 
been most successful in keeping and feeding the young 
plaice, still it must be remembered that those he dealt 
with were a comparatively small number of isolated 
specimens, and not the bulk of the season’s hatching. 
We propose, then, to continue our rearing experiments, 
but only to make use of the odd hundreds and tens— 
setting free at a very young stage (as they do in Scotland 
and America) the round millions and thousands. I do 
not say that I regard this as absolutely satisfactory. It 
still leaves in doubt the ultimate fate of the fry set free. 
We do not know what proportion of them are killed off at 
early stages in the sea, although we suspect that propor- 
tion to be a large one. But it is the only practical method 
until we determine by further experiment the conditions 
under which it is possible to rear large numbers of larve 
‘through their metamorphosis into small fishes. 
We are certainly greatly retarded in our work at Piel 
by the want of a large open-air tank, which could be 
used as a spawning pond. Of the various schemes that 
have been before the Committee of late years in regard to 
