30 I. IJIMA : HEXACTINELLIDA. I. 



failed to secure, was obtained in abundance by the books of tlie 

 native fisbermen, who then happened to be engaged in their 

 business near her. f^ays Willemoes-Suhm ('76) in one of his 

 ' Challenger ' letters : " It was very fortunate for us to have 

 met with these boats (the Saganii fishermen's), for, were it not 

 for them, we would perhaps never have known that we were on 

 the Ifyalotiema-ground.'' This single instance may has'e no real 

 significance, but at any rate, the chance for even the largest 

 trawl to bring up such numerous large Hexactinellid specimens 

 in as clean and perfect a condition as those obtained by the 

 long-lines, must be said to be very poor indeed. The Hexacti- 

 nellid materials, which were dredged chiefly by Pouktales and 

 Al. Agassiz and worked over by O. Schmidt ('70, '80), were 

 apparently nearly all incomplete or otherwise unsatisfactory 

 specimens, many being in no better state of preservation than 

 fossil remains. Of the numerous Hexactinellid specimens collect- 

 ed by the ' Challenger ' chiefly by means of trawls and 

 dredges, only a few were quite perfect, all the rest having been 

 injured in one way or other (Schulze '85, p. 437). I think the 

 same may be said in general of the trophies of the ' Investigator ' 

 and of the ' Albatross,' so carefully described by the masterly 

 hand of F. E. Schulze. AVhen the latter ship was in Japan in 

 the spring of last year, I was allowed, by the kind courtesy of 

 Captain Moser, to stay on board during her collecting cruise 

 over my old grounds. She made, generally speaking, very suc- 

 cessful hauls with lier ' Tanner ' and ' Blake ' trawls, but what 

 greatly impressed me was the comparative scarcity of the Hexacti- 

 nellida among the catches and the fact that what was obtained 

 of that group of sponges was mostly in fragments, badly macer- 

 ated and soiled. There was a time when I myself tried trawling 



