184 A DESCENT INTO PERPETUAL NIGHT 



Even the ear-phones were replaced. The Bell Telephone 

 people said that if I would let them have my old ones for 

 their museum they would furnish sets of the latest models. 

 Then the Burroughs Wellcome Laboratories donated medi- 

 cal supplies which would take care of every contingency 

 except the possible major one. And so forth, and so on. 

 Only a noncommercial naturalist, about to undertake 

 some new adventure or phase of exploration, can ever 

 realize the friendliness of hosts of people, who, perceiving 

 an opportunity of adding to the factors of safety, go to 

 all lengths of trouble and expense. 



Finally, the ten thousand and one details of an expedi- 

 tion such as this were initiated or completed, and we were 

 ready to leave for Bermuda. I cabled to Panama for Otis 

 Barton to join me if he wished, and he expressed a desire 

 to concentrate on motion pictures for a news reel and for 

 a feature film upon which he has been working for several 

 years. Together with Captain John H. J. Butler, Mr. Bar- 

 ton first developed the idea of the bathysphere, and fi- 

 nanced the initial cost. In the autumn of 1930 Mr. Barton 

 presented the bathysphere to the New York Zoological 

 Society and it is now playing an important part in the 

 study of Bermuda shore and deep-sea fish, researches upon 

 which my staflF and I have been engaged for the past six 

 years. 



The bathysphere arrived in Bermuda on July fifth and 

 I visited her while she was deep down in the lowest hold 

 of the Monarch, half hidden by cargo. Later in the same 



