252 ALEXANDER AGASSIZ 



ure, but Captain Tanner and I rigged up a new machine 

 which has worked to perfection and shows plainly that 

 there is no intermediate fauna as I have always stuck 

 to. But using the net deep down just above the bottom, 

 say one hundred fathoms, I have brought up some in- 

 teresting things, and have also found some good things 

 by towing at two hundred fathoms only in deep water 

 and have caught as surface things, which go down in 

 the day or when it blows, many of the so-called deep-sea 

 things." 



On leaving Panama for the second time, the Albatross 

 proceeded to Galera Point, about four hundred miles 

 from Panama Bay, on the coast of Ecuador ; from here 

 she ran a line across the Humboldt Current as far as the 

 south face of the Galapagos, something over five hun- 

 dred miles to the westward of Galera Point. After visit- 

 ing the islands the ship worked her way to Acapulco. 



When once well out at sea the work of the expedition 

 settled down to its regular routine. The day's pro- 

 gramme began with a sounding, often before six, but 

 sometimes, after a hard day, it was not taken till the 

 change of the watch at eight o'clock. Then the whirr 

 of the machine on the poop deck overhead could be 

 heard buzzing away merrily while Agassiz and the Cap- 

 tain were at breakfast. As soon as the bottom sample, 

 a tube full of abyssal ooze, reached the surface, it was 

 taken to the laboratory amidships. While Agassiz was 

 examining this, the great dredging boom was swung out 

 to starboard, the big Blake trawl was lowered away, and 

 the ship lay to while the three or more miles of wire 

 rope sometimes necessary to drag it along the bottom 

 was slowly paid out ; then the vessel steamed ahead 



