6 
president’s address. 
special expeditions, organised from time to time by societies- 
and academical institutions, and sometimes by Governments, 
such as the dredging expeditions of the British Association 
under Forbes and MacAndrew, the voyages of the “ Lightning” 
“ Porcupine,” and “ Challenger,” under Carpenter and 
Wyville Thomson, the Norwegian North Atlantic Expedition, 
and the North Sea Voyage in 1872 of the German “ Pom- 
merania ” ; and fourthly, the period of marine laboratories, 
of which in English waters the stations at Plymouth, 
St. Andrews, Port Erin, and Millport are well known, and find 
their counterpart on the continental coasts of the English 
Channel and North Sea in the well-equipped establishments 
at Roscoff, Wimereux, Helder, Heligoland, and Bergen. 
There are thus many sections of the coast-line of North- 
western Europe where local investigations in Marine Biology 
can be carried out with the facilities necessary for modern 
research, although the absence of a permanent laboratory on 
the East Coast of England, where naturalists can find the 
equipment necessary for a month’s or a summer’s research, 
constitutes a serious deficiency which, with Mr. Southwell, 
I hope will be remedied at an early date by East Anglian 
enterprise. 
Within recent years Marine Biology has entered upon a new 
phase, mainly brought about by the great development of the 
sea fisheries and the problems concerning the maintenance 
of the supply of fish to which that development has given rise. 
A great amount of knowledge bearing upon the natural 
history of our sea-fishes has been accumulated by the workers 
at our marine laboratories. The eggs, larvae, and young stages 
of the various species have, with few exceptions, been iden- 
tified and described ; the size at which maturity is reached 
has been approximately determined in many cases ; the 
relative fecundity of many species has been ascertained ; 
a good deal is known concerning the habits of those species 
which frequent the shallower waters ; and last, but not least. 
