1908. Coi<GAN. — Dublin Marine Biological Committee, 11 1 



long before that all hope of reaching Lambay Deep was 

 abandoned. A couple of scrapes made in about eight fathoms 

 while crossing the bay gave us one living specimen each of 

 Sepiola atlantica^ Polycera Lessonii, Pleurotoma ^tebula^ and 

 Odostomia rufa. 



Having rounded the Bailey we tried the beam trawl and the 

 dredges several times in the deep water off the northern 

 shores of the Howth promontory, and as on our previous trip 

 of the 13th Jul}^ we brought up a large quantity of rubbish, 

 tin cans, clinkers, cabbage stalks, and old boots. Many of 

 the old boot-soles were thickl}^ studded with Doris bilamellata^ 

 the commonest of all the County Dublin nudibranchs, 

 grouped in threes or fours, and some of large size up to three- 

 quarters of an inch. One scrape in about thirteen fathoms 

 between the Baile}' and the Nose gave us two very fine speci- 

 mens of Aplysia hybrida fully five inches long when in motion, 

 one a uniform dull dark brown (var. depilayis), the other light 

 brown mottled with sage green, but the results of our dredg- 

 ings in this deep-water area were extremely meagre in all 

 departments of marine life. 



It was fully half-past seven that evening, about ten hours out 

 from Kingstown, when we made Lambay Sound and sat down 

 to dinner on deck by the dim light of a swinging lamp. That 

 dinner was the committee's most suceessful operation of the 

 day. The lamp w^e all agreed cast quite as much shade as 

 light ; the free deck space w^as nowhere large enough to 

 accommodate an Irish jig dancer, and the " Kmma Mar3'\s " 

 bulwarks were hardly six inches high, yet none of us fell 

 overboard or into the hold, and only one of the five 

 was heard to complain that his after-dinner tea had been 

 ** sweetened with salt." 



We slept on deck that night. A very broken sleep it was, 

 short snatches of dozing alternating with long spells of gazing 

 at the Pleiades overhead or listening to the rush of the tide 

 against our bow^s, and we rose stiff and unrefreshed before 

 dawn next morning. By half-past five, just as the sun's 

 rim had cleared the sea margin, the anchor was up 

 and we were running eastward under the northern cliffs of 

 Lambay. Another hour took us to Lambay Head. Here the 

 dredge was shot in about fifteen fathoms, and the '' E)mma 



