…Passing now to the special subject of my address to-night, I will ask your attention in the first place to some general aspects of our Sea Fisheries as a source of national food supply and to the general scientific investigations which have been undertaken in the hope that the yield of the harvest of the sea may be still further increased. In the second place a more detailed account will be attempted of some particular researches bearing upon these matters, which happen to have formed during the past few years the subject of my own special work. If in the course of my remarks you may seem to be asked to follow me in excessive detail into some of the more remote corners of the problems which arise, my excuse must be that, even at the risk of upsetting the balance of the picture as a whole, it is probably possible to speak to more purpose and with a better prospect of stimulating others to fresh efforts, by describing researches with which I have been personally concerned, than by a more general and better proportioned, but necessarily more superficial treatment of the whole subject.