WHERE CURRENTS RIP 61 



caught it. If it had kept quiet we should never have 

 seen it among the spots of foam. Putting one's 

 hand down into the water was to feel a host of 

 creatures, some visible, others not to be seen until 

 they crashed on the vision in a dazzle of irides- 

 cence. 



In some old magazine of natural history there is 

 a report of the eggs of Halohates, the water 

 striders which live on every ocean, being fomid 

 on a floating feather, but, as far as I know, there 

 has never been a reconfirmation of this. In the 

 course of our association with the Current Rip we 

 found, not one, but seven examples of it. As 

 we were rowing slowly about, I saw a long white 

 wing feather of a booby, which seemed to have 

 some strange encrustation. I scooped it up and 

 found that three-fourths of the vane was clotted 

 with a rust-colored mass of ova. I did not stop 

 to examine this carefully at the time, as new speci- 

 mens were passing at every moment, but put it in 

 a small aquarium of running water. The next 

 morning both this aquarium and the four succeed- 

 ing ones were a maze of tiny skating figures, and 

 the distended stomachs of the small fish in two 

 of the tanks, showed that others than myself ap- 

 preciated this discovery of hatching Halohates. I 

 found that there were at least twenty thousand 

 eggs on one feather, undoubtedly representing the 

 united efforts of many females. Some of the eggs 

 seemed newly laid and these would often overlap 

 others that held large embryos. Under the lens 

 they looked like a mass of tiny grains of rice, some 



