6 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
in so many other matters, you must first catch your fish, which itself is 
comparatively easy ; but this is not enough, you must catch him without 
injuring him, which is by no means so easy, at any rate with a trawl, 
and impossible in a trawl working in the ordinary way for fish for mar- 
ket. Trawls so working are down for several, perhaps five or six, hours. 
And, how can fish, especially small ones, escape without bruises of every 
degree of violence ? And how can bruised fish be expected to live? 
Kow the soles in the Museum aquaria are of small size, from 4 or 5 
inches in length upwards. These are caught and brought in by poor 
boatmen, fishing with small nets only, in or at the mouth of the Mersey, 
and consequently the fish are less injured. The specimens sent to 
America were thus caught, and had time to die or to get well and used 
to confinement, u seasoned,” in fact, or u educated,” as Mr. Duncan 
called it, before being “ transported.” These circumstances have doubt- 
less had a share in the success of the venture, the main cause of which 
was due to changing the water carefully every day. The three deaths 
mentioned occurred before the water was so changed, and none occurred 
after in that consignment. 
Mr. Blackford has already sent in return living specimens of the 
Limulus , or king-crab, and promises fish and amphibia to follow. King, 
crabs are not new to us, but we have long been without them. Our 
first living specimens were brought by Captain (now Sir James) Ander- 
son, while in the Cunard service, prior to laying the Atlantic cable from 
the Great Eastern steamship. That supply, I think the first imported 
to England, besides supplying our own wants to the full extent of our 
accommodation, enabled us to send living examples to London, Oxford, 
Dublin, and elsewhere. 
Dr. David Walker, late naturalist to the Fox Expedition in search of 
Sir John Franklin’s remains, going on a visit to Paris, kindly took one 
wherewith to initiate friendly relations with naturalists there. But the 
professor he took it to was at dinner and would not be seen, and was 
so long at dinner that Dr. Walker took umbrage and brought his king- 
crab back again across the Channel, till, just before landing, his patience 
and endurance being quite exhausted, he threw the exceedingly awk- 
ward prickly creature overboard. Some short time thereafter Dr. J. E. 
Gray, of the British Museum, received a specimen which had been 
washed ashore on the south coast, and, therefore, positively asserted it 
to be an important addition to the marine fauna of England. 
Yery recently several further consignments of soles have been suc- 
cessfully made by the same means and by the same channel as before 
noted. It has been found that four specimens may be safely trans- 
mitted in each globe, and on one occasion I was informed by Mr. Bar- 
tholomew, the chief steward of the Britannic, that every one of the 
twenty-four shipped in the six globes arrived alive at Yew York, show- 
ing that complete success is possible of attainment, though of course 
