Marine Fauna of the Chatham Islands.* This paper is based on materials collected by the writer when a member of the Otago Institute Party at Chatham Islands in the summer of 1924. By Maxwell W. Young, F.C.S., Biologist, Marine Department, Wellington. [Read before the Otago Institute, 1925; received by Editor, December, 1928; issued separately, 31st May, 1929.] Plates 16–17. Introduction. In dealing with the Marine life of the Chatham Islands the first point to be considered is their geographical position in relation to New Zealand. These islands lie approximately five hundred miles due East of Lyttelton. A cold current from the south passes up the east coast of the South Island, and, branching off at Banks Peninsula, flows eastward to the Chathams. Another current from the vicinity of Cook Strait, coming southwards, also passes over towards the Islands. The speed of the main body of the current may be judged from the fact that light wreckage from Cook Strait has been picked up three weeks later, on the north side of the main island. This gives an average speed of just over one mile per hour. There is no possibility of error in the observation, as the date of the wreck was noted in the Press, and the finding of the wreckage in a Station diary. Drift bottles liberated by the Marine Fish Hatchery staff off Otago Heads have been picked up on various parts of the Island at intervals of from three months to fifteen months after liberation. In this case, however, one must take into consideration the fact that the bottles had a longer journey, and probably had lain on the beach for some time before being noticed. The observation that the water which flows past our coast also washes the shores of the Chatham Islands makes one naturally expect to find that their marine fauna would be closely allied to our own, and this is borne out by the observations which I made on my two trips to the Islands, and by the observations of other zoologists who have also visited them at various times. My first trip was made mainly for technological purposes, in connection with the fishing industry, but I found time to do some shore collecting, and also examined the stomach contents of several tons of fishes, mainly blue cod. Stomach content examination is not only of value for finding the foods of specific fishes at various seasons and on different grounds, but it also gives one a good idea of the off-shore fauna. It has also an important bearing on the subject of the migration of fishes. The second trip, undertaken on behalf of the Otago Institute, was made with the main object of examining the littoral life of the west and north coasts of the main island.