84 
quite possible in the light of what follows that they left the district. 
Of the second lot of 26 liberated on October 25th, one was got on i 
November 27th 4 miles out in 25 fathoms ; another was caught on 
March 28th in 14 fathoms at Goswick, which is about 12 miles from 
Beadnell in a straight line to the north. The third recapture was 
made, however, on July 6th, in 15 fathoms, so far north as Fort- 
ieth en, on the Kincardineshire coast of Scotland, and just about 7 
miles south of Aberdeen. This is about 80 miles in a straight line 
from Beadnell. The label was returned to us through the Scottish 
Fishery Board, and we have especially to thank Dr. Williamson for 
his kind intermediation and for the information he furnished with 
regard to the recapture. This we have also had confirmed by the 
fisherman, Mr. John Craig, Portlethen. 
Like the others it was just undergoing the process of hardening, 
and would have been described as a large white crab when labelled 
and liberated at Beadnell. Mr. Craig said the crab when he got it 
was an ordinary sized crab, and it was then hard. 
It cannot be said then that the crabs always find their way back 
to the same area in returning from their winter migration. In the 
course of this migration the great majority evidently do not go much 
beyond 6 miles out, but that a proportion migrate to much greater 
distances from the land we have known for some time from infor- 
mation and specimens furnished to us by trawlers. These may in 
very many instances, as would appear from this evidence, be the 
older females. But we have an example — one of several — a male 
measuring only 2 15-16th in. which was said to have been caught 
in a trawl net in November on the North-East Bank. When we 
consider moreover that both the crab in question and the one obtained 
at Goswick, if they had not been caught would more than probably 
have come into “ berry ” at the end of 1904, we see that we are on 
the fringe of a question of much practical and theoretical importance, 
but one which, in the absence of further evidence, it would be pre- 
sumptuous to do more than hint at. 
We had intended repeating the experiment this autumn, but the 
labels we ordered arrived too late for the purpose. It is clear from 
the results we have obtained that it is important to have the marking 
done as early in the autumn as possible, or soon after casting, so as 
to give the crabs the whole period of the outward migration. It is 
not just the same thing to catch the crabs during the winter in the 
deep water, to mark them, and liberate them from the beach. We 
venture to suggest that the experiment should be taken part in by 
