of the Fishery Board for Scotland. 
.'JOl 
is intimately associated with the almost undiminished prosperity ol* the 
marine fisheries, notwithstanding the vast increase of men, boats, and 
apparatus. 
Besides tne pelagic eggs of fishes, many pelagic eggs of a Crustacean and 
of a Mcdusoid (?) occurred in April in Sd Andrews Buy. 
Generally speaking, the bottom trawl-like tow-nets, or other tow-nets, 
used on the bottom gave the largest number of ova, and, besides, they are 
most productive of lishes, and these at a more advanced stage. 
So far as present experience goes, the degree of development of the 
several collections affords only a limited amount of information in regard 
to distribution, for the distance travelled is unknown, and the tempera- 
ture of the water is uncertain. Besides, the case is wholly different from 
that in which a given species spawns within a limited time. Here the 
spawning period of most forms is prolonged — even in the case of single 
individuals, though, of course, much more in regard to successive indivi- 
duals of each species. The eggs captured beyond the Island of May do 
not show, in any marked manner, different stages from those procured at 
the stations near Inchkeith. That many ova from the offshore waters are 
carried into the sheltered bays goes without saying, and was fully pointed 
out in the Trawling Keport, but we cannot yet draw data of moment 
from the degree of development of these pelagic eggs. The migration of 
the young fishes is likewise an important factor. Thus, the young ling 
seek the rocky margins in their barred condition j the young cod, green cod, 
and pollack the pools and the laminarian forests in the same regions ; and 
the turbot and brill the border of low water or sandy beaches at an early 
period of their lives ; whereas the adult ling, cod, and other forms are met 
with, as a rule, in greatest numbers in the open waters. 
That this profusion of the pelagic eggs of fishes, in a given area of the 
ocean, is diagnostic of the abundance of their parents in that region, was 
sufficiently apparent in the Trawling Expeditions of 1884, for instance, 
by contrasting the tow-nets south-east of the Island of May with those in St 
Andrews Bay, or by contrasting those from Smith Bank with those in 
Aberdeen Bay. The vast masses of the ova of the cod that occur in 
Norwegian waters, and which are occasionally beached in long lines- 
just as the bulky masses of the translucent salpoe were on the shores of 
Lochmaddy in 1865 — is another example. These indications are fairly 
accurate indications of the finny population of the waters at the particular 
time, yet it must be remembered that the pelagic eggs of fishes, for ex- 
ample, in St Andrews Bay, give no clue to the multitude of young plaice 
which are harboured there, and probably have been harboured there from 
time immemorial, and whose numbers have hitherto defied the persistent 
efforts of both liners and trawlers ; and, further, whose numbers seem to 
to be almost independent of legislative measures within territorial waters. 
Again, no trace of the large pelagic egg of the halibut has ever been 
seen in the tow-nets, so often used either on the great fishing banks, as in 
the trawling work of 1884, and since that date, in the regular work of the 
' Garland,' or in the boats of the Laboratory ; yet young halibut of small 
size (about a foot) are occasionally found in St Andrews Bay and elsewhere, 
in inshore waters. This would raise a doubt as to whether the action of 
currents on the pelagic ova altogether suffice for the distribution of the 
common food-fishes. Again, if we are right in supposing the egg of the 
halibut to be pelagic, it' may yet be one that floats deeply in the water. In 
connection with the halibut, a remark may be made here as to the extra- 
ordinary numbers of this huge species which are landed yearly on the pontoon 
at Grimsby ; indeed, the array of these fishes forms one of the most striking 
features of that remarkable fishing centre. A single vessel from Iceland 
