42 
to make them themselves from my descriptions. This, however, I 
should not advise them to do. The first specimen had better be obtained 
through myself, as there are a number of little things which are of con- 
sequence, but which it is not easy to explain without making the descrip- 
tion exceedingly complicated. — The otter-seine has been employed already, 
so to speak, in all latitudes, in northern and in southern countries, as well 
as at the equator, and on depths from the shore to at least 1000 fathoms, 
so it seems as if the apparatus has really supplied a want. 
1. The seine sticks in the bottom where the latter is very soft. This 
draw-back has been felt from the very first, and it is not always redressed 
by making the foot-rope lighter or by tying divers .lighter ropes on to it. 
Dr. Hjort has in his "PFiskeforsøg i norske Fjorde”, 1899, p. 33, described 
a way to avoid that the foot-rope at the arms, and afterwards at the mouth, 
is dragged down into the clay on a soft bottom, and fills the bag of the 
seine. Over each stone at the foot-rope he fixes a glass ball, and as the 
stones are hanging in short straps, the ball will lift the foot-rope, already 
before the latter reaches quite down to the bottom. This method seems at 
many places to be suitable. But, as we have learnt that it is the arms 
which first begin to cut down into the soft bottom, and that the mouth 
then afterwards is drawn down into it, I have chosen an other means, viz. 
to cut the arms off the seine, so that only a little stump remains at each 
board. In this way the same thing is attained. We might imagine that 
the width of the seine would be much diminished by this, but this is not 
the case; for the boards must not, even if the arms are rather long, be 
removed more than 12—16 feet from one another (Report VIII, p. 18). The 
speed, the length of the crow-foot, and the size of the boards must be suited 
to this. But we can get the same width by stretching the meshes of the 
mouth above and below, i. e. by sewing them on to the head and foot 
ropes, streched out (See fig. 6. Report VIII, p. 15). The mouth itself 
thereby becomes somewhat broader, and the form of the seine more similar 
to that of a common trawl (See fig. 3. loc. cit. p. 8), only that the head and 
the foot ropes are of the same length. I first got the idea by reading Dr. 
P. Schiemenz's technically excellent investigations on "Die Zeesenfischerei in 
Stralsunder Revier”, in "Abhandl. d. Deutschen Seefischerei-Vereins”, vol. II, 
1398. The arms on our otter-seine are only necessary, when we want to 
catch eels in a rich zostera-vegetation; for then they must be able to cut 
close to the bottom, where the eel lies. On a bottom where there is 
no rich vegetation, they are consequently superfluous, and the bottom is so 
nearly everywhere, except in some particularly small, shallow fjords. With 
such seines without arms I have afterwards fished exceedingly much, also 
eels, on a bare bottom, and, as far as I remember, the seine has never been 
filed with clay or mud. Of course, we must not put too heavy a weight 
on the foot-rope; but we are not tempted to do so either, as the boards, 
