( 
xlii PROCEEDINGS OE THE 
assembled in flocks. At High Elms tbey built three-quarters of a 
mile from the river, the old ones feeding the young until they were 
able to get to the water. 
Ordinary Meeting, 15th December, 1890, at Watford. 
George Roofer, Esq., E.Z.S., Yice-President, in the Chair. 
Mr. Frederick Downer was elected a Member of the Society. 
The following lecture was delivered:— 
“ Our Eood-Eishes, their Eriends and Eoes.” By Erank E. 
Beddard, M.A., E.Z.S., Prosector and Davis Lecturer to the 
Zoological Society of London. 
The lecture, an abstract of which follows, was illustrated by 
means of the oxy-hydrogen lantern, kindly lent by Mr. S. 
Monckton White. 
Mr. Beddard said that when he was honoured with the invita¬ 
tion to address this Society, he reflected a considerable time as to 
the subject which he should select, and after some consideration it 
occurred to him that he should like to bring before the members 
one of the utilitarian objects of the science he professed, that of 
zoology. It was a reproach to zoologists that they had not done so 
much for the well-being of mankind as the students of some other 
branches of science—chemistry, for instance—had done, but he 
would ask their attention to the investigations which were going 
on in France, Germany, and elsewhere, relating to one very im¬ 
portant branch, in which the study of living organisms (Bacteria) 
exercised an important influence over the well-being of mankind. 
The matter which he should say something about concerned the 
bearings of the science of zoology upon questions relating to food- 
fishes. There was a department of the Government, the official 
Board, which had a good deal to do with our fishes, but the work 
of that board was mainly devoted to the collection of statistics and 
their tabulation. The actual investigations upon food-fishes were 
carried on by various institutions throughout the country, of which 
the recently-formed Marine Biological Association was the most 
prominent. The work of that Association was two-fold. Its 
design on the one hand was to study the life-history of our various 
food-fishes, and to endeavour to ascertain from those studies the 
best methods of encouraging their propagation and fixing the close 
times when they should not be interfered with. At the same 
time another object was held in view, that of advancing zoology 
generally, particularly in its utilitarian aspects. 
Since the laboratory of the Association at Plymouth had been 
open, the investigations had had a distinctly-important bearing on 
food-fishes. As they probably knew, the fishes, in a strict zoological 
sense, not crustaceans or mollusks, were propagated by means of 
eggs, of which each parent produced an enormous quantity. The 
eggs produced by a single cod-fish or salmon were numbered by 
millions. Since that was so, it was evident that an enormous 
