130 TO DAVY JONES S LOCKER 



upon invisible bodies. Whatever made them was too small 

 to reach my eyes, as was almost the host of copepods or 

 tiny crustaceans through which we passed now and then 

 (Fig. 53). At one time I kept the electric light going for 

 a full minute while we were descending, and I distinctly 

 observed two zones of abundance and a wide interval of 

 very scanty, mote-like life. When they were very close 

 to the glass I could clearly make out the jerking move- 

 ments of copepods, but they were too small to show any- 

 thing more. The milky sagitta, or arrow worms, were more 

 easily detected, the eye catching their swift dart and then 

 focusing on their quiet forms. While still near 1300 feet 

 a group of eight large shrimps passed, showing an inde- 

 terminate coloration. We never took large shrimps at 

 these comparatively shallow levels in the trawling nets. 



Barton had just read the thermometer as seventy-two 

 degrees when I dragged him over to the window to see 

 two more hatchet-fish and what I had at last recognized 

 as round-mouths. These are the most abundant of deep-sea 

 fish and we take them in our nets by the thousand. Flick- 

 ering forms had been bothering me for some time, giving 

 out no light that I could detect, and twisting and wrig- 

 gling more than any shrimp should be able to do. Just as 

 my eyes had at first refused to recognize pteropods by 

 their right names, I now knew that several times in the 

 last few hundred feet I had seen Cyclothones, or round- 

 mouths. In the searchlight they invariably headed up- 



