= 
ES 
238 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
knowledge of subsurface temperatures on the continental shelf at 
other seasons, and at any season elsewhere than in the region studied 
by Libbey and Verrill, is limited to a few bottom readings taken by 
the Fish Hawk (Tanner, 1884a, 1884b), Bake (Smith, 1889) and 
AuBaTross (Townsend, 1901). Verrill’s observations were located 
at successive points across the zone between the fifty and 150 fathom 
contours, and they are especially valuable, because they were taken 
before and after the extraordinary mortality of the tile fish, Lopholatilus 
chamaeleonticeps, of 1882 (p. 266). On July 21, 1880, the BLake ran a 
line across the continental shelf from Montauk Point, getting the 
following bottom temperatures: 24 fathoms, 60°; 43 fathoms, 49°; 
71 fathoms, 51°; 129 fathoms, 51°; and 732 fathoms, 39.5°. Although 
these readings were taken with the Miller-Casella (maximum-mini- 
mum) thermometer, and hence register merely the coldest water at 
each station, which may not have been on the bottom, they show that 
the cold water on the shelf was separated from the even lower tempera- 
ture of the abyss by a warmer belt at 75-130 fathoms, just as it was in 
July, 1913; and that this condition obtained as far east as the north- 
east end of George’s Bank, where the bottom temperature, following 
down the continental slope, rose from 42° at seventy fathoms to 44° 
at 139 fathoms, and then fell to 40.5° at 300 fathoms. This “warm — 
belt”? was certainly distinguishable as late as August 17, 1880, when — 
the Fish Hawk found bottom temperatures of 40°-48° in about 
thirty fathoms off Block Island. In September and October of the 
same year, the Fish Hawk took a considerable number of bottom 
temperatures on the shelf south of Block Island with deep-sea ther- 
mometers of the reversing type, finding about the same temperature 
(51°-53°) at 100-142 fathoms as in July, with colder water deeper 
down the slope (Verrill, 1880, Tanner, 1884a). But no readings were 
taken on the inner part of the shelf except in the very shallow water 
close toshore. The BLakeE records suggest that the water on the shelf 
south of Block Island was several degrees warmer, depth for depth, in 
1880 than in 1913; but the discrepancy may be due to the fact that 
the observations were taken two weeks later in the former year. 
The Fish Hawk temperatures for 1881 (reversing thermometers), 
again demonstrate the existence of the “warm belt” bathing the’ 
bottom at 70-100 fathoms, with lower bottom temperatures in the — 
shallower water near shore (Verrill, 1881, 1884a, Tanner, 1884b), much 
the same distribution of temperature as in 1913. Thus on a line 
S 1/2 W from Marthas Vineyard, the bottom temperature rose from | 
42° at forty-four fathoms to 52° on the bottom between the sixty- 
