26 



THREE CRUISES OF THE " BLAKE. 



away, the bar and tangles, which may be composed of a dozen 



to fifteen bundles, afford perhaps 

 the most effective apparatus for 

 collecting. The amount of ma- 

 terial sometimes brought up baffles 

 description, and it is no easy task to 

 separate the specimens from the tan- 

 gled mass in which they have been 

 caught.^ The trawl is by far the most 

 useful instrument in deeper water, 

 where the bottom generally consists 

 of ooze or fine mud, — the finer in 

 proportion to the distance from land. 

 The trawl first used in deep water 

 was the ordinary beam-trawl of fish- 

 ermen. When this form of trawl is 

 used in shallow water, it is easy to 

 guide it or to weight it so that it will 

 always fall on its runners and drag 

 successfully. At great dej)ths, how- 

 ever, this form of trawl becomes ob- 

 jectionable, from the impossibility, 

 owino' to currents or the drift of the 

 vessel, of guiding it, no matter how 

 well-balanced it may be, so that it 

 shall not land on the beam, a mis- 

 hap that involves great waste of time, 

 sometimes a whole day, from unsuc- 

 cessful hauls. On the "Blake," a 

 modification of the trawl was used 

 Blake " Trawl. (^igs. 25, 26), which workcd admira- 



1 A tangle-bar of great efficiency, con- 

 sisting of two poles tied in the form of 

 the letter A, with cross-bar and lines 

 with fishing-hooks, has been used with 

 great success by ]\fr. Marshall, to collect 

 halcyonoids. A very similar apparatus is 

 also used by the natives of the Philip- 

 pines to collect euplectella. 



The members of the United States 

 Fish Commission have also introduced a 

 number of admirable modifications of 

 dredges, trawls, tangles, and sieves ; and, 

 in fact, every part of the dredging appa- 

 ratus now necessary for deep-sea work 

 has been greatly improved by the ex- 

 perience obtained during more than ten 



