20G BULLETIN : MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



Delabarre of Brown University, the scheme was successfully carried out, 

 and a most profitable and enjoyable summer spent by those who par- 

 ticipated in the expedition. The party also included Messi-s. H. B. 

 Bigelow, L. B. McCornick, and H. \V. Palmer, undergraduates of Har- 

 vard. I was asked to accompany them and record any geological obser- 

 vations that might be possible on a trip of the kind proposed. Bather 

 more was accomplished in this direction than was hoped for at the 

 outset, and the results arc believed to be of sufficient interest to war- 

 rant some degree of detail in their recital. The following pages are 

 intended to afford a brief treatment of the more important problems 

 met with during the summer; some of these have found solution, others 

 will, it is hoped, be more clearly defined for future visitors to a little 

 known shore. 



The equipment of the expedition was quite modest but sufficed for 

 most needs, excepting that for rapidity of travel. The vessel selected 

 for the journey was the "Brave," a forty-ton fishing schooner, just re- 

 built and specially fitted up to be the summer home of the party and 

 of the four seamen employed to take the larger share of the navigation 

 required. Thoroughly staunch and clean, and commanded by a skip- 

 per of unusually wide experience and close knowledge of the thousand 

 dangers of this coast, the craft was found to be both safe and comfor- 

 table. The instrumental outfit included five aneroid barometers ; two 

 ordinary thermometers ; a corrected thermometer lent by the Superin- 

 tendent of the United States Coast Survey, from whom there were also 

 obtained two sets of salinometers and a hydrometer cup; four Negretti- 

 Zambra deep-sea thermometers, and five hundred fathoms of piano-wire, 

 lent b}' Mr. Alexander Agassiz ; a sextant, lent by Brown University ; and 

 a prismatic compass. The tools in trade of a botanist, an ornithologist, 

 and a geologist, were likewise represented on board. Professor Dela- 

 barre worked assiduously on the flowering plants encountered on the 

 route, and collected freely from the cryptogamic vegetation which is so 

 striking a feature of the coast. Mr. Bigelow's former experience enabled 

 him to seize quickly the peculiar ornithological features of the coast, and 

 he has added several species new to its list of birds. 1 The writer, 

 though chiefly occupied with the general geology ashore, spent some 

 time in a limited study of the hydrography of the Labrador Current. 

 Before proceeding to the discussion of results, it will be well to give a 

 brief account of the itinerary. By so doing, the conditions under which 

 the observations were carried on may be most easily understood. 



1 Pf. Auk, 1002, xxvii. pp. 24-31. 



