iC'.-1-A.i/'/ 1 \ ri>iii:h'ii:s i:.\I'i:iuti(>\. r.ii',-ir, xiii 



'• We fancied now that we had said farewell to the Sargasso sea aiixi its interest- 

 ing animal life, but at stations 67 and 69, in close accordance with the hydrographical 

 conditions depicted in fig. 93 (fig. 1), we came once more across more southerly forms. 

 In the upper layers there were the same young fish, many of them with .stalk-eyes, and 

 Leptocephali, while flying fish, Sargasso weed, and the familiar Sargas.so animals 

 were all once more in evidence. 



" We found a large cluster of eggs, weighing approximately a kilo., drifting about 

 at station 69, belonging to the common angler-fish (Lophius piscatorius) , the develop- 

 ment of which was studied by Alexander Agassiz; we hatched out the eggs and 

 obtained the stages depicted by him. Angler-fish only inhabit the coast banks, so 

 that our find of slightly developed eggs, that could not have been drifting many days, 

 indicated that we were now in the neighbourhood of the American coast bank. 



" In deep water we found once more at stations 67 and 69 the deep-sea animals 

 of the Sargasso sea, that i-S to say, all the black fishes and red crustaceans which we 

 have so often mentioned already. There were not merely the commonest kinds of 

 small fish, but also large ones (such as three examples of Gastrostomns), and fishes 

 which are caught in other oceans (Aremtia.'^. Serri vomer). 



60 



fLEMliH CAP 



.BANK OF ; : 

 \ST PIERRE :-G.».'h 



^ 



'3iABI.E 1. 



B A \ N K 



70 



Fig. 2. " Michael Sars ' Stations 69 to 8u. 



'•' At station 70, on the edge of the coast bank, where the depth was 1,100 metres, 

 we discovered that we had for the second time left purely oceanic conditions behind, 

 and once more the true boreal plankton appeared in the surface layers. There was 

 the little copepod Ualanus finmai'chicus, the commonest crustacean in the Norwegian 

 sea, and we also now met with Euthemisto, Nyctiphanes, Krohnia liamata, Limacina 

 helicina^ and Clione limacina^ all species that are regarded as specially characteristic 

 of the Norwegian sea. Still in the deep water from 350 metres down to 1,100 metres 

 we continued to get the familiar pelagic deep-sea fish Cyclothone signata and C. 



1 Limacina was taken in numbers by Haeckel and Murray off Scourie in Scotland. 



