KniULE FISHES. 



99 



nities of Pyrosomoi quite as wonderfully developed near tlie entrance to 

 the sounds on the west coast of Otago as Bennet describes tliem to be 

 under the equator.* The tempei-ature of the surface water of the sea on 

 that occasion was 57°, while the highest temperature of the aii- for 

 the day was only 48° Fahr. 



On the north-east coast of New Zealand, as far south as the Bay of 

 Plenty, there are further evidences of a current from the noi-th to be 

 found in the abundance of the Flying Fish, the occasional ^dsits of the 

 true Nautilus, and also of the Argonaut or Paper Nautilus. Gigantic 

 pods of a leguminous plant that grows on the Fijis are also frequently 

 cast up in the same way that West Indian seeds are thrown on the 

 coast of Scotland by the Gulf Stream. This current, although it reaches 

 New Zealand, does not however appear to pass down the east coast, as 

 there is abundant proof of the existence of a steady di-ift from New 

 Zealand to the eastwai-d, by which sawn logs, telegraph poles, and on one 

 occasion, I am informed by Mr. H. Travers, a number of totai-a sleepera 

 that broke adrift from Pigeon Bay duiing the earthquake wave in 1868, 

 have been cast up on the Chatham Islands, which lie 450 miles east of 

 Banks Peninsula. These ishmds appear, as it were, to lie in an eddy to 

 the leeward of New Zealand, as a much larger proportion of pumice 

 stone and di-iftwood, floating to the eastward, finds a resting place there 

 than the relative size of the two groups of islands would lead us to 

 expect. 



It is, most probably, tMs tropical current sweeping from the East 

 Cape to the Chatham Islands that gives rise to what the whalers call 

 the " Banks," which is a favourite feeding ground for the sperm whale. 

 The depth of water in this area has not been explored however, and it 

 is considered doubtful if there is really a shallow bank, or anything more 

 than a tract of ocean which is unusually rich in marine life.t 



It may be stated incidentally that the investigation of the currents 

 in these seas possesses much interest for the ethnologist, and for the 

 zoologist in other branches than Ichthyology, as the diffusion of the 



•"Wanderings of a Naturalist," p. 40. Part of this warm curieut must 

 sweep the south coast of Australia, for Bemiet also met with Pyrosoma on one 

 occasion in winter at the western entrance to Bass Straits, along with other inter- 

 tropical species, and remarks its 1)eing unusual in such high latitudes ; and Professor 

 Huxley obtained his only specimen in the same latitude, south-west of Australia, 

 in the month of June. 



+ " Dieffenbach's N.Z.," Vol. I., p. 4G. 



