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food of our commercial fishes and of the conditions under which they live, is necessary to a perfect understanding of those strange fluctuations in their supply, which are recorded from year to year, was early realized by the Commissioner, and all his investigations have been conducted according to a thoroughly comprehensive scheme comprising these several points of inquiry. Aided by a corps of trained assistants, the greater number of whom have been volunteers, he has every summer since the Commission was started, personally supervised the carrying on of such researches as he deemed most important, and as the funds at his disposal have permitted. During the earlier years, operations were necessarily limited to the shallow water areas near shore, and the