2 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



surface of the ocean-floor far below for some ten or 

 twenty minutes, and then to haul it up again and see 

 what living wonders the unseen world has sent you, is, 

 in my opinion, the most exciting and delightful sport in 

 which a naturalist can indulge. There are difficulties and 

 drawbacks connected with it. You cannot, in a small 

 boat and without expenditure of large sums on a steam 

 yacht and crew, reach from our coast — with rare excep- 

 tions in the north-west — with a fair prospect of returning 

 in safety, those waters which are ioo fathoms deep. And 

 it is precisely in such depths that the most interesting 

 " hauls " are to be expected. I had had in former days 

 to be content with 10 fathoms in the North Sea and 

 30 to 40 off the Channel Islands. 



Then there is the question of sea-sickness. Nothing is 

 so favourable to that diversion as slowly towing a dredge. 

 I used to take the chance of being ill, and often suffered 

 that for which no other joy than the hauling in of a 

 rich dredgeful of rare sea creatures could possibly com- 

 pensate, or induce me to take the risk (as I did again 

 and again). I remember lying very ill on the deck of a 

 slowly lurching " lugger " in a heaving sea off Guernsey, 

 when the dredge came up, and as its contents were turned 

 out near me, a semi-transparent, oblong, flattened thing 

 like a small paper-knife began to hop about on the boards. 

 It was the first specimen I ever saw alive of the " lancelet " 

 (Amphioxus), that strange, fish-like little creature, the 

 lowest of vertebrates. I recognized him and immediately 

 felt restored to well-being, seized the young stranger, and 

 placed him in a special glass jar of clear sea-water. A 

 few years later the fishermen at Naples would bring me, 

 without any trouble to myself, twenty or more any day 

 of the week (" cimbarella " they called them), and I not 

 only have helped to make out the cimbarella's anatomy, 



