60 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [CHAP. n. 



and all kinds of suctorial copepods. One of them will 

 take a crab or a large fusus or buccinum quietly out 

 of one's hand, and with a slight movement transfer it 

 down its capacious throat into its stomach, where it 

 is very soon attacked and disintegrated by the power 

 ful gastric secretions. In one welled smack I visited 

 on one occasion, one of the fish had met with some 

 slight injury which spoiled its market, and it made 

 several trips in the well between London and Eseroe 

 and became quite a pet. The sailors said it knew 

 them. It was mixed up with a number of others in 

 the tank when I was on board, and certainly it was 

 always the first to come to the top for the chance of 

 a crab or a bit of biscuit, and it rubbed its ' head 

 and shoulders ' against my hand quite lovingly. 



On the 15th and 16th we dredged over the Eseroe 

 Banks at a depth of from 200 to 50 fathoms, the 

 bottom gravel and nullipore, and the temperature 

 from 8 to 10 C. The banks swarm with the com 

 mon brittle star Ophiothrixfragilis, with the Norway 

 lobster Nephrops norvegicus, large spider crabs, several 

 species of the genus Galathea, and many of the genus 

 Crangon. So ample a supply of their favourite food 

 readily accounts for the abundance and excellence of 

 the cod and ling on the banks. 



There is some rough rocky ground on the Egeroe 

 Banks, and notwithstanding all possible care and the 

 use of Hodge's ' accumulators ' to ease the strain on 

 the dredge ropes, we lost two of our best dredges and 

 some hundreds of fathoms of rope. On the morning 

 of the 17th we sighted Egeroe, as usual only getting 

 now and then a glimpse of the islands of this remote 

 little archipelago by the lilting of the curtain of mist 



