28 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



had many examples of that in the past from our own work 

 in the Irish Sea, and I doubt not that when at a future 

 meeting in this session Mr. Johnstone brings before you, 

 as I hope he will, the work done during the year in our 

 fisheries laboratory he will be able to furnish you with 

 fresh instances. It is worthy of note that during the past 

 year the Government department of Fisheries has been 

 transferred from the Board of Trade to what is now the 

 Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. The operations that 

 result in the harvest of the sea are now placed under the 

 same guiding hand as those that affect the harvest of 

 the land. Aquiculture and agriculture have similar 

 disciplines, and similar methods should give similar 

 results. We may hope that now both are united under one 

 official head, in the former case as in the latter the harvest 

 will be increased as the result of scientific cultivation. 



A Committee like this, or Biologists in general, it 

 seems to me, have two obvious duties, the one to Science 

 and the other to the State or community. The first duty is 

 to cultivate and advance Science, to extend the boundaries 

 of their own department of knowledge, and that duty I 

 need not urge here, as this Committee has been from the 

 beginning a body of investigators, and will I do not doubt 

 continue to make and publish original researches. The 

 duty we owe to the community in which we are placed 

 seems to me at the present time to fall into two parts. 

 The one of these is concerned in practical applications to 

 the arts, industries and public health — such as pearl- 

 formation and mother-of-pearl, sea-fisheries, the pollution 

 of oyster-beds and sewage problems in general. 



In connection with the last named I may remark that 

 at a public meeting in Birmingham last winter Sir Oliver 

 Lodge raised the question of whether Copepoda, from their 

 well-known purifying action, first determined by Dr. 



