FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING, 



like being torn from their ocean bed, that they often use a power 

 given them by nature and split into fragments before reach- 

 ing the surface. Rare forms of starfish sometimes delight 

 the eye of the naturalist who is sorting the contents of the 

 dredge ; and deep sea fish, which, on being released from the 

 tremendous pressure to which they were subjected in the deeper 

 water, become distended by the gases contained within them 

 and often burst, reaching the ship's deck in a rather dilapidated 

 condition. Often, however, the dredge comes up nearly empty, 

 or with but little life in it. To my question as to whether such 

 work was not very disappointing at times, the captain replied: 

 "Not at all; we consider ourselves fortunate if we get the 

 dredge back safely," for it occasionally happens that the dredge 

 and many fathoms of cable are lost by the catching of the 

 apparatus on the bottom. 



When the bottom is supposed to be so rocky that lowering a 

 dredge would be unsafe, "tangling " is resorted to, which con- 

 sists in dragging over the bottom large bunches of hemp rope 

 attached to iron bars. These bunches of rope catch and hold 

 in their strands small marine animals with which they come in 

 contact. In the April 2d number of Science, Mr. Benedict has 

 described the method of surface collecting, so I need do nothing 

 more than refer to it here. It consists in dragging a large but 

 fine-meshed net from the end of a swinging boom, along the 

 surface and through the water just below the surface. It is 

 often done on the port side while dredging is going on on 

 the starboard side. This secures all the surface life found in 

 the seaweed and just below the surface of the water. Varieties 

 of Tentennarius, a little, brown-mottled fish frequenting the 

 masses of seaweed, are caught thus in large numbers, as well as 

 small crabs, which also live in the seaweed; a great many marine 

 worms, various kinds of molluscs and other forms lower in the 

 scale of life. 



IVashin^ton, D. C. 



