MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 295 



fifteen miles from land, masses of leaves, pieces of bamboo, of sugar- 

 cane, dead land shells, and other land debris, which are undoubtedly all 

 blown out to sea by the prevailing easterly trade-winds. We frequently 

 found floating on the surface masses of vegetation, more or less water- 

 logged and ready to sink. The contents of some of our trawls would 

 certainly have puzzled a palaeontologist ; between the deep-water forms of 

 Crustacea, Annelids, Fishes, Echinoderms, Sponges, etc., and the mango 

 and orange leaves mingled with branches of bamboo, nutmegs, land 

 shells, both animal and vegetable forms being in such profusion, he would 

 have found it difficult to decide whether he had to deal with a marine or 

 a land fauna. Such a haul from some fossil deposit would naturally be 

 explained as representing a shallow estuary surrounded by forests, and 

 yet the depth might have been 1,500 fathoms. This large amount of 

 vegetable matter, thus carried out to sea, seems to have a material 

 effect in increasing, in certain localities, the number of marine forms. 



The collections made have all arrived in Cambridge, and will be sent 

 for determination, as fast as practicable, to the naturalists who have 

 undertaken the reports on the different groups of last year's collections. 

 As their preliminary reports are well under way, I need only allude here 

 in general to some of the most interesting types. Among the Foraminifera 

 are a number of the arenaceous types noticed by Mr. Brady in the col- 

 lections of the " Challenger " and " Porcupine " ; among the Sponges, a 

 species allied to Phoronema, a small Hyalonema, tufts of large, silicious 

 spicules (Hyalonema proper), covered at one end with Zoanthus very 

 similar to the common Japanese type ; fine series of Dactylocalyx, show- 

 ing the whole mode of growth from a simple globular form and a gigantic 

 Euplectella. The collection of Starfishes was quite small, and con- 

 tained nothing worthy of special notice. The collection of HolothU' 

 rians contained, in addition to the deep-sea forms mentioned in my 

 former letters, a larger number of species than last year, — genera allied 

 to Molpadia, Caudina, Echinocucumis, and the like. 



Among the Echini, with the exception of the Pourtalesia group, all 

 the types collected by the " Challenger " are well represented, with a 

 few Spatangoids hitherto unknown. The number of Echinothurise was 

 quite large. Of the Pourtalesia group, but few specimens in good con- 

 dition were obtained, though the trawl brought up numerous fragments 

 of several of the genera (if I am not mistaken) collected by the " Chal- 

 lenger" in deep water in the Southern Ocean. The small number of 

 Clypeastroids collected, even when approaching the South American 

 shore, at the 100-fathom line, near Trinidad, where they are so common, 



