120 THE ATLANTIC. (CHAP. I. 
de Brito Capello and Gama Lobo. The meteorological depart- 
ment is in telegraphic communication with the principal Eu- 
ropean observatories, and the Magnetic Observatory is similar 
in almost all respects to that at Kew. The building is insu- 
lated for temperature, and a very complete photographic regis- 
tering apparatus is in constant use. Photographs of the sun, 
registering the form and position of the spots, are taken daily ; 
and an Astronomical Observatory, which is to be used for the 
present chiefly for observations of the sun, is in process of com- 
pletion. 
We enjoyed greatly our few days in Lisbon. The British 
Minister, the Hon. Sir Charles Murray, was most courteous in 
his attention. The weather was delicious; we were in the mid- 
dle of the orange and lemon harvest, and the air was redolent 
of the perfume of the golden fruit; and there was certainly 
little to remind us of the winter we had so lately left behind 
us, except the leafless planes, with their curious pendent bullet- 
like seed-vessels, ranged along the boulevards. 
On the evening of the 12th of January we steamed out of 
the Tagus, and the next day we dredged in 470 fathoms off Se- 
tubal. The bottom was the ordinary gray ooze of the North 
Atlantic, and we sifted out of it many of our old acquaintances 
of the British area, such as Limopsis borealis, Columbella ha- 
lieti, Dacrydium vitreum, and many others, which confirmed 
us in our anticipation that we should find our deep-sea fauna 
very widely diffused. 
We dredged again off Cape St. Vincent on the 15th, in fine 
light weather, in 525 fathoms, and brought up some of the dead 
coils of yalonema, each with its coating of Palythoa, but no 
perfect or living specimens; and on the following day, weary 
with the comparatively unproductive sifting of tons of tena- 
cious mortar, we made our first attempt with the trawl at a 
depth of 600 fathoms. The experiment, as I have already said, 
was entirely successful. The number of individual specimens 
