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ANNUAL EEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1916. 



Philippines. I had alwaj^s been told that squids were old-fashioned,/ 

 antiquated relics of the past, whose very method of backward pro- 

 gression marked them as ,^ 

 unfit competitors with 

 other marine animals. 



It was on board the Al- 

 hatross in the harbor of 

 Jolo on a dark night, with 

 the sea as smooth as glass. 

 We were fishing with the 

 submarine light, a mere 16- 



candlepower electric bulb inclosed in a glass globe 

 connected to a water-tight cable. It should be 

 stated that the sea about Jolo Harbor was found 

 to be one of the richest plankton-bearing pieces of 

 water that it has been my good fortune to visit; 

 and where you have an abundance of microscopic 

 life, there, too, will you find the larger forms that 

 subsist upon it. A swish or two of the light and a 

 raising and lowering of it at once attracted a cloud 

 of minute forms, then larger elements came, in 

 part attracted by the light and in part by the food. 

 The protozoans accumulating about the globe were 

 soon followed by worms and crustaceans, whose 

 tangential course would soon have carried them 

 beyond our light were it not that the fascination 

 curves it more and more and apparently renders 

 the animal unable to escape from the charm that 

 draws, and bends its path to spin about the globe. 

 Thus we soon found millions of creatures drawn 

 into a spinning vortex about our light — the 

 " wheel of life," as some one has aptly termed it. 

 But new members were soon added; small fish of 

 various kinds, a school of sardines dashing madly 

 after the small crustaceans and worms, and still 

 larger and larger fish at 

 greater distances from the 

 light, alwaj^s preying upon 

 the lesser circle within; 

 now and then even the 

 shadowy outline of a large 

 shark injected itself into 

 the distant reaches of our lamp. It was a mad dance, this whirling, 

 circling host of creatures. Soon a new element entered; living 



Fig. 6. — Fishing with octopus iu Japan. 



