THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 149 



DREDGING IN PORT PHILLIP. 



By O. a. Sayce. 

 {Bead hefore the Field Naturalists^ Club of Victoria, 9th December, 1901.) 

 Quite recently several members of our Club spent four days in a 

 dredging cruise in Port Phillip, in the neighbourhood of the 

 entrance. We were able to do this through ihe great kindness of 

 Mr. E. F. Cooke, who placed his steam yacht Firefly and his 

 services for navigation at our disposal. Throughout he sacrificed 

 himself entirely on the altar of our ambition, and we tender him 

 our hearty thanks. 



Our party consisted of Messrs. J. Gabriel, J. Kershaw, F. E. Grant, 

 and myself, and it has fallen to my lot to brietiy outline some of 

 the work done. Nune of us had dredged in this part of the Bay 

 before. My remarks will be directed towards mentioning the 

 localities we dredged at, and describing the depth and character 

 of the bottom, and also noting some few of the animal forms met 

 with. I am stimulated to do this, although the knowledge gained in 

 such a limited time must necessarily be very impertect, in the 

 hope that it maybe of some slight use to subsequent workers. 

 We felt it to be a loss that previous workers, such as the late Mr. 

 J. Bracebridge Wilson, who did a large amount of valuable work 

 near the " Heads," had left so few notes of his dredging grounds 

 behind him. He however defined and numbered certain areas 

 (leaving large spaces unmarked), and published their bearings in 

 the "Proceedings Royal Society of Victoria," vol. vii. (N.S.), pp. 

 261-263, ^^^ gave no reason for such limitations nor mention of 

 the bottom except depth, nor life to be met with. No doubt he 

 had sufficient reasons for forming these boundaries, but one fails 

 to understand his system. For instance, in the middle course of 

 the South Channel he has formed two small stations joining each 

 other (Nos. 8 and 9), but there are wide areas higher up and 

 lower down on each side with no stations marked at all, yet in 

 going over the ground we could see no reason tor this. We have, 

 however, in the collecting of our material tried to follow him as 

 closely as possible, and went armed with the Admiralty Chart 

 with his own markings thereon. 



We arrived off St. Leonards late in the evening, aud anchored 

 for the night. In the morning we shaped a north-east course, 

 and on arriving east of Governor's Reef, and outside of Prince 

 George Bank, started dredging, working towards the head of 

 the West Channel. The depth varies between 6 and 8 fathoms, 

 and for the most part with a muddy bottom of a bluish colour. 

 Here we dredged the rare bivalve, Nucula grayi, and amongst 

 other forms may be mentioned the ovoidal-shaped sea-urchin, 

 Echinocardiuvi australe, which came up in numbers in almost 

 every dredge. Almost as common was an interesting tunicate 



