70 
1.— THE MIGRATIONS AND THE GROWTH OF PLAICE. 
(Reprinted with slight modification from the Transactions of the Natural History 
Society of Northumberland, ^c. The Society has also granted the use of the blocks 
for the illustration of the paper.) 
In 1898 Dr. T. W. Fulton'’' published the results of experiments 
made under the auspices of the Fishery Board for Scotland with a 
view to determining the migrations and rate of growth of plaice 
and other fishes. His conclusions with reference to plaice were : — 
“ (1) That plaice tend to remain within the inshore waters during 
the period of immaturity; (2) That while they may travel 20 miles 
in about a year or so, their movement is as a rule slow ; 3. That in 
the areas investigated their movement is in a definite direction, 
namely, inwards along the south shore of the Firth of Forth in a 
westerly direction, then outwards and eastwards along the northern 
shore, and that this general direction is continued round St. 
Andrew’s Bay towards the north.” During the years 1889 to 1892 
the large number of 1,250 plaice were labelled and liberated, and of 
these 103 were recaptured, or 8-2 per cent. The author considered 
however that this proportion was more than probably too small, for 
the first batch of labels proved to be unsatisfactory. An examina- 
tion of the details of the experiment bears out the general con- 
clusions. A certain number certainly went to the south, and in the 
Firth in the opposite or other directions, but the general tendency 
was to go out of the Firth to the north along the coast of Fife, and 
from the coast of Fife to the Tay, and to the north of the Tay. 
Several found their way to the deeper water off the Forth and off 
the Tay. 
In the same year, 1898, Dr. C. G. Job. Petersenf made experi- 
ments in labelling plaice, and arrived at a method which has been 
adopted with some modification by subsequent experimentalists. 
He marked and liberated about 1,000 fishes in the Limfjord, and 
recovered 51, but believed that the proportion would have been 
increased if the fishermen had been more interested, and also that 
many of the labels had been lost. They were immature plaice, and 
* nth Ann. Rep. S.F.B. 
t Report of Danish Biolog. Stat. 1893. 
