wel 
where we anchored for the night. 
NATURE 
NOTES FROM THE “CHALLENGER” 
VI. 
WE left Bermudas on Thursday, June 12, for the 
Azores. His Excellency Gen. Lefroy, C.B., F.R.S., 
Governor of the Island, with his private secretary, Capt. 
Trench and Capt. Aplin, R.N., Captain Superintendent of 
the Dockyard, and a party of ladies, came on board in 
the afternoon, and we bade farewell, with great regret, to 
the friends from whom we had received such unvaried 
kindness during our stay. At half-past five we steamed 
out of the Camber and passed among the reefs to 
Murray’s Anchorage, on the north-east side of the island, 
Next morning we 
proceeded through the narrows, and early in the forenoon, 
having seen the last of the treacherous and beautiful 
purple shadows in the bright green waters of Bermudas, 
we set all plain sail and stood on our course to Fayal. 
In the afternoon we got up steam and sounded, lat. 32° 37’ 
N., long. 64° 21’ W., in 1,500 fathoms, with the usual 
grey-white chalky bottom which surrounds the reefs. 
Our position, at noon of the 15th, was lat. 33° 41’ N., 
long. 61° 28’ W., 1,610 miles from Fayal. 
On the morning of the 16th we sounded in 2,575 
fathoms, the bottom a reddish ooze, containing a large 
number of foraminifera. The bottom temperature was 
15 C, A small, rather heavy trawl, with a beam 114 feet 
_ long, was put over in the morning, but when it was 
hauled in, about five in the afternoon, it was found that it 
had not reached the bottom. This was the first case of 
failure with the trawl. It was probably caused by the 
drift of the ship being somewhat greater than was sup- 
posed. The net contained a specimen of one of the 
singular and beautiful fishes belonging to the Sternop- 
tychidz, an aberrant family of the Physostomi, distin- 
guished by having on some part of the body ranges of 
spots or glands producing a phosphorescent secretion. 
The surface of the body is, in most of the species, de- 
void of scales, but, in lieu of them, the surface of the skin 
is broken up into hexagonal or rectangular arez, or sepa- 
rated from one another by dark lines, and covered with a 
brilliant silvery pigment, dashed with various shades of 
green or steel blue. We have taken, in all, four or five 
species of these fishes, all in the net, when dredging or 
trawling, at great depths. I do not think they come 
from the bottom, however. It seems more probable that 
they are caught in the net on its passage to the surface, 
possibly at a depth of two or three hundred fathoms, 
where there is reason to believe there is a considerable 
development of a peculiar pelagic fauna. 
On Tuesday, the 17th, the trawl was lowered at seven 
in the morning, and in the forenoon a sounding was taken 
in 2,850 fathoms. 
Several examples of a large and handsome species of 
the genus Sca/pellum came up in the trawl, a few still 
adhering to some singular-looking concretionary masses 
which they brought up along with them. One of these 
lumps, to which a large example of the barnacle was 
attached, was irregular in form, about three centimetres 
in length, and two in width. The surface was mammel- 
lated and finely granulated, and of a dark-brown colour, 
almost black. A fracture showed a semi-crystalline 
structure, the same dark-brown material arranged in an 
obscurely radiating manner from the centre, and mixed 
with a small quantity of a fragment of greyish-white 
clayey matter. This nodule was examined by Mr. Bu- 
chanan, and found to consist, like the nodules dredged in 
2,435 fathoms at Station 16, 700 miles to the east of 
Sombrero, almost entirely of peroxide of manganese. 
Some other concretionary lumps were of a grey colour, 
but all of them contained a certain proportion of pyro- 
lusite, and they seemed to be gradually changing into 
nodules of pyrolusite by some process of alteration or 
substitution, This is undoubtedly very singular, and it is 
difficult to conceive what can be the source of so wide- 
spread a formation of manganese. It is, of course, a 
matter of great difficulty to make anything like accurate 
analyses on ship-board. Mr. Buchanan is giving his 
careful attention to the whole subject of the chemical com- 
position of the sea-bed, and I hope that the determination 
of the composition of a number of samples, when a favour- 
able opportunity occurs, will throw additional light upon 
this andanumber of other obscure points connected with 
the chemistry of modern geological formations. 
Scalpellum regium,n. sp. (Fig. 1), is by far the largest 
of the known living species of the genus. The extreme 
length of a full-sized specimen of the female is 60 mm., of 
which 40 mm. are occupied by the capitulum, and 20 mm. 
by the peduncle. The capitulum is much compressed, 
25 mm. in width from the occludent margin of the scutum 
to the back of the carina, The valves are 14 innumber ;- 
they are thick and strong, with the lines of growth 
strongly marked, and they fit very closely to one another, 
rn 
a aA 
Fic. 1. 
Fic, x.—Scalpellum regium, Wy. Thomson. a, Males lodged within the 
edge of the scutum. Fic. 2.—Male of Scalpellum regium. 
in most cases slightly overlapping. When living, the 
capitulum is covered with a paie-brown epidermis, with 
scattered hairs of the same colour. 
The scuta are slightly convex, nearly once and a half 
as long as broad. The upper angle is considerably pro- 
longed upwards, and, as in most fossil species, the centre 
of calcification is at the apex. A defined line runs down- 
wards and backwards from the apex to the angle between 
the lateral and nasal margins, The occludent margin is 
almost straight. There is no depression for the adductor 
muscle, and there is no trace of notches or grooves along 
the occludent margin for the reception of the males ; the 
interior of this valve is quitesmooth. The terga are large, 
almost elliptical in shape, the centre of calcification at 
the upper angle. The caripa is a handsome plate, very 
uniformly arched, with the umbo placed at the apex, 
Two lateral ridges, and a slight median ridge run from the 
umbo to the basal margin. The lower part of the valve 
widens out rapidly, and the whole is deeply concave. The 
rostrum, as in Scalpellum vulgare, is very minute, entirely 
