232 PROCEEDINGS OP THE 



them motionless, and slightly bent at the angle in the middle of 

 the wing, dropped gently to the bottom, the stiff expanded wing act- 

 ing as a parachute. They reminded us of the sea-gulls dropping 

 down to pick up food thrown overboard. Some of them would stop 

 half-way in their descent, and resume paddling or winging their 

 way to the surface ; again to drop quietly down to the bottom, 

 along which they would flutter on their side, and then rise again, 

 but as if with some difficulty to get under weigh at first; or they 

 would remain at rest till we lifted the bottle, when they started 

 anew. They rose by a succession of rapid strokes, using the wings 

 simultaneously, and it was a pretty sight to see them dropping slowly 

 down again. They were not observed to use the wings as feet to 

 walk or crawl along the bottom, as Mr. Jeffreys says (Mollusca, 

 vol. v., page 117) A. Agassiz did. They only fluttered along and 

 came to rest, or got under way like a solan goose, and sped upward 

 to the surface. Perhaps if a flat stone had been put into the bottle 

 they would have got a better hold than on the smooth glass. It 

 would have been interesting to have seen whether they moved 

 about like Gasteropods, or were able to use their wing-feet, right 

 and left, like more rational beings. They were such joyous, merry 

 creatures when swimming that they looked particularly miserable 

 and helpless as they lay at the bottom. No exertion, apparently, 

 being required in the act of descending, it may be a state of rest, 

 and all that is necessary in deep water. This habit of dropping 

 down would soon have filled the towing-net bottle, if we had had 

 patience to leave it down long enough in the water. As it was we 

 got a layer of them as often as it was put down and brought up. 

 We went ashore after breakfast, towing the net after us to the 

 quay, and found them all round about, and they were quite as 

 numerous when the yacht left the loch at 1040 a.m. to go round 

 the north point of Skye. All day it continued dull and hazy, and 

 almost sunless till five o'clock, tbe Skye mountain tops being quite 

 invisible. At noon the sun peeped out for a little, about which 

 time we stopped to have a dredge over a patch of shell sand marked 

 on the chart near the north of Skye. While the dredge was down 

 in 37 fathoms, the towing net was put over, but we had got beyond 

 the Pteropods, and not one was visible — Cydippesuml Chetochili alone 

 being found in the bottle. The dredge brought up little — a couple 

 of urchins, Echinus sphaera, Amjrfiidotus roseus, and a Tritonia 

 hombergi. It also contained a large stone with a mass of Fluatra 



