PRELIMINARY REPORT. 5 
him on the principle of priority, it seems unjustifiable to cancel a name 
given to an oceanic ridge, or to a great basin or deep, and to substitute 
another because it agrees with the principles of the reformer. 
Professor Supan anticipates that all maritime nations will attempt in 
the future to perpetuate the names of their exploring ships and their cap- 
tains, and thus introduce endless confusion. But certainly the confusion 
can be no greater than it is in the interior of Africa, where each explorer, 
according to his nationality, has given the names of his eminent country- 
men to the physical features of the country he traversed. 
The nomenclature of the Arctic and Antarctic regions, depending abso- 
lutely upon the national geographical system, if I may so call it, is perhaps 
the most obvious example of the approval which civilized nations have 
given to the system which perpetuates the names of the hardy explorers 
and of the ships they commanded when pushing their way towards the 
poles. Bold indeed would be the man to attempt on “ national grounds” 
to reform the names associated with so many heroic voyages. I do not 
mean by this in any way to compare the hardships of the Arctic voyages 
with those explorations which are laid in the pleasant paths of the tropics, 
and finally can only suggest that school children may perhaps learn a little 
interesting history if geographical names do not everywhere replace per- 
sonal ones. 
The character of the bottom of the Moser basin is most interesting. 
The haul of the trawl made at Station 2, lat. 28° 23’ N., long. 126° 57’ W., 
brought up the bag full of red clay and manganese nodules, with Tertiary 
sharks’ teeth and cetacean ear-bones; and at nearly all our stations we 
had indications of the existence of manganese nodules. At Station 13, in 
2690 fathoms, lat. 9° 57’ N., long. 137°47’ W., we again obtained a fine 
trawl-haul of manganese nodules and red clay; there must have been at 
least enough to fill a forty-gallon_ barrel. 
The nodules in our first haul were either slabs from six to eighteen 
inches in length and four to six inches in thickness, or small nodules rang- 
ing in size from that of a walnut to a lentil or less, while those brought up 
at Station 13 consisted mainly of nodules looking like mammillated cannon- 
balls, varying from four and a half to over six inches in diameter, the 
