SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 185 
oceanic plankton to the Clyde sea-area, or if 1t encounters 
Atlantic water entering the North Channel between 
Ireland and Cantyre, and forces that stream with its 
contained oceanic organisms along the Ayrshire coast 
to Arran, Bute and Loch Fyne, that would sufficiently 
account for the distribution and character of the plankton 
in that region. 
If there is no marked inflow of Atlantic water on 
the West Coast of Scotland, between Cantyre and Skye, 
in summer, as the prevalence of neritic plankton seems 
to indicate, it may be due to the Atlantic ‘* Gulf 
Stream drift’’ flowing northwards, roughly parallel 
_ with the line of the outer Hebrides, to reach the North 
of Scotland and sweep round into the North Sea, thus 
enclosing an area within the Hebrides where the 
endogenetic, in the main neritic, plankton is left to 
develop in comparative freedom from invasion by oceanic 
or allogenetic organisms. 
How far this state of affairs obtains, and how far 
the above suggested explanation will hold good for other 
times of the year, is still unknown. Further observa- 
tions at other seasons, and extended to other localities, 
are most desirable in the interests of that fuller know- 
ledge of the changes in the nature and in the abundance 
of the fundamental food-matters in our seas which is 
essential to an understanding of the movements of the 
shoals of migratory fishes. 
