Anatomical and histological details are here given of two organ systems, which, my experiments lead me to believe, may secrete hormones concerned in the sex reversal that overtakes all male Pandalus borealis Kroyer. The descriptions eschew any attempt at detailed cytology, and refer exclusively to prawns taken from the population of Gullmarf jord in south-west Sweden. There is reason to believe that, as with Palaemon (= Leander) serratus (cf. Carlisle, 1955), different populations may vary widely in the detailed topography of the endocrine organs, as well as in appearance, life history and growth rate (cf. Horsted & Smidt, 1956).

The sense organ of Carcinus mamas located in the joint between the dactylo- and propodite possesses several types of sense cells (Wiersma & Boettiger, 1958). The most interesting types react to unidirectional displacement of the dactylopodite with equal sensitivity over the total possible arc of movement. Velocity has little influence on the discharges of the movement fibres since the maximum rate of firing is reached at a speed which is relatively little faster than the threshold. Fibres with marked differences in threshold are present for both extension and flexion. Other units in the organ react like conventional stretch receptors and give continuous discharges as long as the joint is near one of the extreme positions. Again different units are present for extension and for flexion. These position fibres are on the whole smaller than the movement fibres and their cell bodies have a more peripheral location in the organ.

At an early stage of an autecological study of Gracilaria verrucosa (Hudson) Papenfuss it seemed possible that the best growth of the plants occurred in places, such as the Achill Sound and the Church Island Channel in the Menai Straits, where, in the absence of heavy wave action, strong currents flowed over the plants. Experiments were carried out, in the sea, to investigate the effect of currents on the growth rate; the apparatus used and described here would probably be suitable for the investigation of current effects on other sedentary marine organisms.

These experiments also led to some observations on the effects of illumination on the pigmentation and growth rate of the plants which were supplemented by laboratory experiments. High intensity illumination in the laboratory also demonstrated positive phototropism in the plant.

The Lutrariidae are large lamellibranchs which burrow deeply in bottom-deposits on the shore and in shallow water. The foot is relatively weak, and they live permanently buried 30 cm or so beneath the surface, maintaining connexion with the overlying water through their long siphons, which are united in a common sheath for practically their whole length. The commonest British species, Lutraria lutraria (L.) is found at low-water mark on shores of muddy sand, and offshore its siphons are sometimes taken by the dredge or grab. Another species, L. magna (da Costa) is more local, and appears to inhabit muddy deposits near the mouths of estuaries. It is a southern form, being occasionally found on the south and west coasts of the British Isles, and, like L. lutraria, its range extends southward to the Mediterranean.

As a result of work by Pirlot (1933), Newell (1948), Smidt (1951) and Duncan (1953) it has become accepted that on European coasts the lugworm has a restricted breeding season occurring only in the autumn. Previously, several workers had stated that this species also spawns in the spring. Kyle (1896) reported that at St Andrews spawning took place between January and March and again between July and September. Similarly, Gamble and Ashworth (1898) and Ashworth (1904) found that on the Lancashire coast the laminarian variety spawned in the spring, although the littoral variety spawned during late summer.

It has been shown (Arnold, 1957) that when exposed to air the common British limpet, Patella vulgata L., reacts to splashing with normal or moderately diluted sea water by raising the front edge of the shell, and that the amount of this movement can be correlated with the degree of dilution and with the tide level from which the animals are obtained. A basically similar result was obtained by the use of solutions of sodium chloride. The precise factors influencing the limpets were not identified. Additional data can now be presented on these and other reactions of P. vulgata as a contribution towards further definition of these factors.

The new species to be described here is very common in the English Channel, though like other members of this genus it is so fragile that it needs to be cultured to be effectively detected. This particular species has been under observation for some years, but publication has been deferred until sections of it could be made available. The observations involved in the taxonomic description have been based on two early isolates numbered 4 and 43 in the Plymouth collection. More recently, however, it has been encountered frequently in routine sea-water samples brought into temporary culture to record the nanoplankton forms present, and we are therefore able for the first time to give tables of seasonal and depth distributions for the incidence of the species, at various stations. In Table i of Appendix (p. 187) its occurrences are listed, all being from water-bottle samples, except those taken on 23 August 1950 and 6 November 1957 (fine tow-net) and on 19 June 1957 (very fine tow-net). Table 2 (p. 188) gives densities at different depths sampled on one day at Hydrographic Station E 1.

Relatively little is known of the exact role of the thyroid gland in teleosts. Although the results of a few studies have suggested that the thyroid influences respiratory metabolism, as in the higher vertebrates, a greater number of experiments have failed to show that either treatment of fish with thyroid hormones or inactivation of the gland produces any significant effect upon the oxygen consumption of the fish. Thyroid activity has been linked with reproduction in some fish, although there is little evidence to show that the relation-ship is more than coincidental. The thyroid has also been connected with osmoregulation, but reviewing this work Pickford (1957) concludes that the relation with osmoregulation is only a secondary or collateral one. Recently Hoar (1953, 1955) has suggested that the thyroid may control the migratory response of fish. However, in the migratory species which have been studied in detail, the salmon, Salmo salar L. and Onchorhynchus spp. and the eel, Anguilla vulgaris, changes in the salinity of the environment during their migrations were complicating factors since salinity changes alone have been shown to stimulate thyroid activity in non-migratory fish (Olivereau, 1954).

It is difficult to determine the weight or nitrogen content of the living tissues of an operculate barnacle without destroying it. It has been customary, there-fore, in ecological work to express growth in terms of various parameters determined from repeated measurements of the shell. Moore (1934) employed shell volume calculated from the height and basal diameters; others (Costlow & Bookhout, 1953, 1956; Mawatari, Hirosaki & Kobayashi, 1954a, b) have used the area of the basis. Most commonly, however, in growth-rate studies the length of the basis measured through the rostro-carinal axis has been used (Hatton, 1938; Barnes & Powell, 1953). Recently, working with animals cultured in the laboratory when the cast of an individual could be obtained subsequent to ecdysis, Costlow & Bookhout (1957) have used the size of the mouthparts as a measure of growth after first establishing their relation to body size. The space, both areal and volumetric, occupied by a sedentary animal is of primary importance in studies of its ecology and measurements of shell-size are, therefore, adequate for many purposes. For some aspects of growth and ecology it is, nevertheless, very desirable that the relation between such parameters and others, more directly connected with the living material, should be established.

The deep sea prawn, Pandalus borealis Krayer, is fished extensively in Norwegian, Swedish and Greenland waters, some 4000 metric tons being caught annually, having a value of about £800,000. Its biology has been investigated by various workers in these countries. Comprehensive accounts have been given by Wollebaek (1903), Hjort & Ruud (1938), Rasmussen (1953)and Horsted & Smidt (1956). Despite this, relatively few populations have been sampled at regular intervals throughout a year. In high latitudes where much work has been carried out, ice, for varying lengths of time, prevents stocks from being sampled. Rasmussen (1942, 1949, 1953) has shown that the life history of P. borealis varies with locality in a range from southern Norway to Spitsbergen. When P. borealis was found in numbers in deep water off the Northumberland coast advantage was taken to investigate the biology of the species at the southern limit of its eastern Atlantic distribution and to compare the results with those of other workers. Knowledge of the biology of the prawn now covers the whole of its north-south distribution and some account of this is given. In addition, the study gives information on a population that has not been fished commercially and provides a more complete picture of sex reversal than has been obtained hitherto.

Describing the migrations and movements of the cod, Gadus callarias L., in the Barents Sea, Trout (1957) suggested that the immature fish carry out a false spawning migration. ‘The pattern of migration of the immatures is basically similar to that of the matures…with increasing age, the immatures’ southerly winter migration approached in length that of the mature cod, as if, in the years immediately prior to maturity they were making a “dummy run” towards the spawning ground.' The seasonal migrations of both the adult and immature cod have been related to changes in the activity of the thyroid gland in this fish (Woodhead, 1959). During the spring of 1956 and 1957, collections of thyroid glands from immature cod were made at stations from Bear Island to the Norwegian coast. It was hoped that a study of these glands might demonstrate further the relationship of the activity of the thyroid gland to the migration of the fish.

Sea surface temperatures have been taken daily at Keppel Pier, Millport (55° 44‘ 55“ N. lat.; 4° 54’ 20” W. long.), for the past 10 years (1949–58), the data being included in returns to the Meteorological Office. The records are not given in their standard publication and they are, therefore, presented here to supplement those of Cooper (1958) for inshore waters at Plymouth some 400 miles farther to the south. For some years the samples were drawn in a specially constructed container fitted with a Fahrenheit thermometer which was read to the nearest whole degree; more recently the bucket method has been used, and a centigrade thermometer graduated in degrees and read to an estimated tenth of a degree. The two methods were checked against each other before the change was made and the results found to be consistent. All readings were taken at 09.00 h G.M.T., irrespective of the state of the tide. The results are shown in Table 1.

Lepas anatifera L. is generally found on floating objects in tropical and sub-tropical oceanic waters, where sea temperatures exceed 18–200 C.

This note concerns a series of experiments to determine the best conditions of salinity, temperature and pH for cultivating the euryhaline phagotrophic dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina Dujardin.

The strain of Oxyrrhis employed was isolated from a brackish pool at Tvarminne, Finland (Droop, 1953a, b). The culture medium for the experiments contained soil extract and an artificial sea water, SW 1 (NaCl, MgCl26H2O, KCl, and CaSO42H2O in the proportions by weight 15:2.5:0.4:0.5), and for food a small quantity of the yeast Saccharomyces exiguus was administered daily from an agar culture with a wire loop.

Oxyrrhis marina Dujardin is a non-photosynthetic dinoflagellate whose obvious mode of nutrition is phagotrophy. The method of feeding was described by Barker (1935). It is an extremely euryhaline and hardy organism and is apparently very successful in brackish habitats such as supralittoral rock pools and ditches (Droop, 1953 a). Owing to the ease with which it can be cultivated Oxyrrhis is a choice for the initial study of phagotrophy among the predominantly plant-like Dinoflagellata.