176 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



and what a ride ! I had to go up to waist in mud, and 

 almost forcibly secured what we wanted from the Navy- 

 Yard and Arsenal, hired a tug, and in two days we got 

 our vessel off ; not badly damaged, but still we have lost 

 three weeks." 



During this cruise he found that the fauna of the 

 Yucatan Bank was identical with that of the Florida 

 Bank, which was already well known from the shallow 

 water on the Florida side. Along the Cuban coast, the 

 dredge brought up quantities of silicious sponges, and 

 many of the corals collected by Pourtales to the south 

 of the Florida reefs. Though Agassiz got many stems 

 of Pentacrinus and portions of the arms, he was not for- 

 tunate enough to obtain a single entire specimen of that 

 famous sea lily, of which there were probably not more 

 than a couple of dozen specimens in collections at the 

 time. He discovered, as the Challenger had, an abund- 

 ance of life on deep bottoms that were covered with Glo- 

 bigerina ooze. He also found that most of his deep-water 

 species were closely allied to those brought up from great 

 depths by that vessel. Often when examining the con- 

 tents of the trawl he would recognize old Challenger 

 friends, including many of the curious deep-sea fishes, — 

 forms he had become acquainted with while examining 

 the Challenger collections with Sir Wyville Thomson 

 the previous winter. One especially interesting species 

 resembled a huge tadpole with a gigantic cartilaginous 

 round head without eyes. Among the others were a 

 couple of species with elongated flattened heads, diminu- 

 tive eyes, and gigantic filaments fully as long as the 

 body, which probably have the function of organs of 

 touch. 



