164 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



history of the young stages in our district has still to be 

 written . 



In our Report for 1900 (No. IX., p. 39), we had an 

 article by Mr. Johnstone and Dr. Jenkins on the shrimp 

 trawling statistics of the Mersey grounds, in which they 

 give a description of this remarkable region, samples of 

 various kinds of hauls and such conclusions as they were 

 able to draw from an examination of our statistics (over 

 1,000 forms) for the period 1893-99. 



The accompanying figure shows the great banks sur- 

 rounding the mouth of the Mersey, and the channels 

 between them. Shrimping is carried on over almost the 

 whole of this ground, the extent of which is roughly 16 to 

 18 square miles. This is only a sample of the remarkable 

 Lancashire and Cheshire shrimping and nursery grounds. 

 Similar areas exist in Morecambe Bay, off the Kibble, and 

 in the estuary of the Dee, and on these grounds we find 

 associated with the shrimp an abundant fauna of both 

 fishes and invertebrates.* The chief fish are the plaice, 

 dab, flounder, sole and solenette, with occasional whiting, 

 haddock, cod, young brill and turbot, sprats, sand-eels and 

 sting-fish. The commonest invertebrates are crabs, star- 

 fish and shrimps. Examples of hauls on different nursery 

 grounds, and at different times of year, are given in 

 our ninth and tenth Reports, and in the Memoir, " Fishes 

 and Fisheries," by Mr. Dawson and myself, and need not 

 be repeated here. Mr. Johnstone has summarised his 

 previous work, from our statistics, as follows : — 



(1.) The great abundance of young flat-fishes on the 

 shrimping grounds. They are, in order of frequency, 

 dabs, plaice, and soles ; solenettes are also very abundant, 

 in some areas nearly as abundant as the soles. 



* See Herdman and Dawson, Lancashire Sea Fisheries Memoirs, 

 No. II. Fishes and Fisheries of the Irish Sea, 190'2. 



