Chap, xxii.] 



RICH DREDGING GROUNDS. 



511 



special 



amongst other Ascidians, and must be placed in a 

 Family, Odacnemidce. 



I cannot here enter into descriptions of the many deep-sea 

 forms of animals which we dredged. For accounts of these 

 and most beautiful figures, I refer the reader to Sir C. Wyville 

 Thomson's " Depths of the Sea " and " The Atlantic." 



We obtained the same animals from the depths in the 

 most widely separated places over and over again, with tedious 

 reiteration. There were, however, one or two localities which 

 we hit upon which are worth referring to, because they are 

 especially rich in deep-sea forms, and because these occur 

 there in comparatively shallow water. 



The first of these localities lies off the Island of Sombrero, in 

 the Danish West Indies. Here, within sight of the lighthouse, 

 in from 450 to 490 fathoms, the dredge yielded a very rich 

 harvest of deep-sea Blind Crustacea, Corals, Echinoderms, 

 Sponges, etc. Another very rich spot lies off the Kermadec 

 Islands. Here, from 630 fathoms, a marvellously rich collection 

 was' brought up by the trawls, including very curious new blind 

 deep-sea fish — Ascidians, Cuttle-fish, Crustaceans {Fo/ycheks, 

 Cystisoma), many specimens of Pentacrinus, large vitreous 

 Sponges {Foliopogon, Euplectella, Ventriculites), and many 

 other very valuable specimens. This is probably the richest 

 ground dredged by us at all. 



Another rich locality lies between the Aru and Ke Islands, 

 and a further one, almost or quite as rich as that off the 

 Kermadecs, lies between the Meangis Islands and the Talour 

 Islands. Here, from 500 fathoms, more than thirty specimens 

 of living Pentacrinus were obtained at one haul of the net, and 

 with them all kinds of other deep-sea forms, very many of the 

 same species as were dredged at all the other three localities 

 mentioned. Any yachtsman or collector wishing to obtain, 

 with the least trouble and most certainty, rare deep-sea animals, 

 would do well to put his dredge overboard at one of these four 

 above-mentioned localities. 



The deep-sea animals are, as I have said, mostly closely 

 allied to shallow-water forms. They appear also to live 

 associated together in closely the same manner as their shallow- 

 water representatives. Some are confined to the sea bottom, 

 and can only crawl upon it ; others, such as fish and shrimps, 

 have a power of extending their range vertically, but some of 

 the fish at least never rise to more than a very small height 

 above the bottom on which they live. 



Lophioid fishes, like the Angler their close ally in shallow 

 water, dangle out in the great depths their lures from above 

 their huge mouths, to attract their prey. Hermit-crabs in the 



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