164 W. K. BROOKS. 



barrier, the deep-blue water of mid-ocean is seen to meet the white 

 sand of the beach, and soundings show that the outer edge is a 

 precipice as high as the side of Chimborazo and much steeper. 

 Nowhere else in the world is the pure water of the deep sea found 

 nearer laud or more free from sediment, and on the days when the 

 weather was favorable for towing outside, we found siphonophores 

 and pteropods and pelagic molluscs, Crustacea, salpse, and all sorts 

 of pelagic larvre in great abundance in the open sea just outside 

 the inlets. 



Inside the barrier the water was always calm, and day after day 

 it was as smooth as the surface of an inland lake. When I first 

 entered one of these beautiful sounds where the calm, transparent 

 water stretches as far as the eye can reach, and new beauties of islets 

 and winding channels open before one, as those which are passed 

 fade away on the horizon, I felt sure that I had at last found a 

 place where the pelagic fauna of mid-ocean could be taken home 

 alive and studied on shore. 



The water proved to be not only as pure as air, but also as 

 empty. At high water we sometimes captured a few pelagic 

 animals near the inlets, but we dragged our surface-nets through 

 the sounds day after day only to find them as clean as if they had 

 been hung out in the wind to dry. The water in which we Avashed 

 them usually remained as pure and empty as if it had been filtered, 

 and we often returned from our towing expeditions in the sounds 

 without even a copepod or a zoea or a pluteus. 



The absence of floating larvse is most remarkable, for the sounds 

 swarm with bottom animals which give birth every day to millions 

 of swimming larvae. The mangrove swamps and the rocky shores 

 are fairly alive with crabs carrying eggs at all stages of develop- 

 ment, and the boat passes over great black patches of sea-urchins 

 crowded together by thousands, and the number of animals which 

 are engaged in laying their eggs or in hatching their young is 

 infinite, yet we rarely captured any larvae in the tow-net, and most 

 of those which we did find were old and nearly through their 

 larval life. 



It is often said that the water of the coral sounds is too full of 

 lime to be inhabited by the animals of the open ocean, but this is 

 a mistake, for the water is perfectly fitted for supporting the most 



