2o 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



picked up near the station. The richness of the neighborhood in deep- 

 water forms has been well known since the studies of the Challenger. 

 Glass sponges of many species are frequent prizes of the fishermen. 

 And stalked crinoids (Metacrinus rotundus) are often taken off the 

 reef Okinose. Among the fishes Bathythrissa, a primitive deep-water 

 teleost, of which the Challenger was able to obtain but few examples, is 

 now taken off Misaki so abundantly that it is regularly shipped to the 

 fish-market in Tokyo. Hag-fishes are common, even more than com- 

 mon, and there have been collected within a relatively small area three 

 genera and four species. Among the sharks Heptanchus is common; 

 Mitsukurina, which is perhaps the Cretaceous broad-nosed Scaphano- 

 rhynchus, is taken occasionally. A Port Jackson shark is abundant, 

 and in the course of a year the neighborhood yields about a dozen speci- 

 mens of the frilled shark, Chlamydoselachus. Of chimseroids, Chimcera 

 phantasma is common, and C. mitsukurii and C. purpurescens also 

 occur; rare, however, is the long-nosed chimsera, Rhinochimcera pacifica. 

 One need hardly remark that the possibilities of Misaki are not 

 exhausted in producing new and extraordinary forms. To cite merely 

 an instance of this, during the writer's visit two hag- fishes were ob- 

 tained, one of which, Paramyxine atami, was transitional between 

 Myxine and Bdellostoma — its outer gill openings being drawn together 

 within the length of about a centimeter; another (B. ohinoseana) was 

 transitional between the hag-fishes of many and of few gills, a large 

 form with eight gill-openings on either side. In fact, it is coming to 

 be expected that each year is to bring to the Zoological Institute at 

 Tokyo prizes from Misaki — one year new forms of sponges; another, 

 a gigantic tubularian hydroid, Branchiocerianthus, as a 'gift from the 

 sea goddess Otohime'; and another, specimens of umbrella-shaped octo- 

 pods, Amphitretus. Under such circumstances it is not unnatural 

 that the visitor should bring away from Misaki a stronger impression 

 of his individual work in collecting — and this implies a clearer picture 

 of the local fauna — than from many an older and better known zoolog- 

 ical station. And he might justly add that the friendship of his col- 

 leagues of Japan is not the least enduring memory of his stay. 



