TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 



During the 1920's, when R.R.S. Discovery II was working in the Antarctic 

 and Subantarctic, one of the commonest disappointments in collecting from 

 the sea-bed was to bring up the dredge from abyssal depths after ten or 

 twelve hours work only to find the net clogged with masses of fibres. Often 

 enough the dredge-bag was so filled with this disgusting mass of 'gubbins' as 

 to preclude the possibility of having taken any material of significant biologi- 

 cal interest, and the whole haul would be jettisoned overboard, after the 

 briefest of rough sortings. This happened so often that the biologists on 

 board coined the term "Gubbinidae" as a familial name for this annoying 

 material. Looking back on his period on board R.R.S. Discovery, Professor 

 Sir Alister С Hardy, f.r.s., tells me that the Gubbinidae were obviously 

 Pogonophora and many tons of pogonophores must have been shovelled 

 overboard by some of the leading marine biologists of the day. The poignant 

 part of this tale is that the Discovery Investigations had a strict rule that no 

 biological material collected should be thrown away on board ship; it should 

 all be preserved and brought back to England. The rule existed just to pre- 

 vent this very happening — the discarding of material of supreme biological 

 interest merely because it went unrecognized. Quite obviously the biologists 

 of the day did not even realize that the Gubbinidae were biological entities. 

 It is possible that enough of the Gubbinidae are still to be found amongst 

 the preserved collections of R.R.S. Discovery to afford the basis for a study 

 of the Pogonophora of the Antarctic and it may be worthwhile for someone 

 to search through the collections. 



It is quite obvious from this tale that Pogonophora form the dominant 

 element of the fauna over quite large stretches of the sea-bed and that their 

 existence remained unrecognized long after they had first forced themselves 

 upon the attention of marine biologists. The earliest reports of Pogonophora 

 date from the period when the Discovery scientists were shovelling the Gub- 

 binidae overboard, but we have had to wait until the collections of the last 

 decade made by the Soviet R.V. Vityaz' had been analysed by Professor A. V. 

 Ivanov before we could appreciate the importance of the group. Professor 

 Ivanov's monograph is the first comprehensive treatment of the phylum. 



In preparing this English edition I have made an attempt to bring it up 

 to date. In the three years which have passed since the original Russian 



