BIGELOW: OCEANOGRAPHY OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 407 



living specimens, though the nets yielded masses of fragments in 

 various stages of decay. 



During all this time the microplankton was extremely uniform 

 qualitatively over all the area studied; but instead of being evenly 

 distributed, it was streaky; and occasionally the hauls missed these 

 streaks, and yielded hardly anything. 



Mr. Welsh's hauls could not be expected to give as satisfactory an 

 idea of the macro- as of the microplankton, because all of them were 

 made on the surface in the day time, and previous experience has 

 shown that it is only occasionally that daylight hauls at that level 

 yield a representative sample. But they show that the larger or- 

 ganisms were usually scanty in April and May, just as they were in 

 Massachusetts Bay early in April, and consisted of the same compo- 

 nents, except that Euthemisto was lacking. However, off Wood Is- 

 land, April 10th, he made a rich haul of Calanus, with many haddock 

 and sand-dab eggs, Clione, Euthemisto, and Sagittae. And again, 

 off the Isles of Shoals, on April 26th, the haul contained hardly any 

 diatoms, but instead, great numbers of copepods, Calanus finmarchicus 

 and Eurytemora in roughly equal proportions, though in each of 

 these instances a haul the next day at almost the same locality yielded 

 swarms of diatoms, chiefly Thalassiosira, with almost no macroplank- 

 ton except fish eggs, and larval Balanus. And on May 14-16, when 

 diatoms were diminishing, there was a decided increase in small 

 copepods (chiefly Calanus) which probably foreshadows the time when 

 the latter once more form the bulk of the plankton. This apparently 

 takes place by the middle of May in Massachusetts Bay, for on the 

 3rd, Mr. Welsh found the water in Gloucester Harbor " reddened for 

 areas of about a square yard several yards apart" with what proved 

 to be swarms of copepod nauplii and young copepods. And on the 

 17th, hauls off Magnolia, Mass., yielded great numbers of small 

 copepods, chiefly Calanus finmarchicus, with a few Eurytemora, 

 besides many crab zoaeae, but no large organisms, and almost no 

 diatoms. 



The haul in Gloucester Harbor, just mentioned, was also notable 

 for the number of Medusae which it contained, the list including 

 swarms of Sarsia tubulosa, a few Bougainvillea superciliaris, Rhathkea 

 blumcnbachi, in both budding and sexual phases, half-grown Tiaropsis 

 diademata, many very young stages of Staurophora mertensii, Obelia, 

 young Aequorea, a very young Cyanea, and an agalmid bell. The 

 fact that the Tiaropsis, Staurophora, Aequorea, and Cyanea were all 

 very young, suggests that they must have passed through the flxed 



