PRELIMINARY REPORT. 9 



messenger reached the detacher, and that the hooks of the detacher were 

 lengthened very considerably above the dimensions figured in my Prelim- 

 inary Report on the "Albatross" expedition of 1891. 1 might add that 

 we made a number of trials near the surface to see the action of the 

 Tanner net under all conditions of position and speed, and I can only 

 assume that Mr. Murray, having no experience, did not handle his net 

 properly, or that it was not properly balanced. I may also add that Cap- 

 tain Tanner used his modified net subsequently in the " Albatross," while 

 running a line of soundings from San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands, 

 in from 100 to 350 fathoms from the surfixce, at considerable distances 

 from the islands and the mainland, and also in Alaskan waters, and always 

 with the results we had obtained befox'e. The closed bag, when towing 

 at 100 fathoms below the surface, always brought up a mass of pelagic 

 animals living at about that depth, while when tried at 300-350 fathoms 

 it brought up little or nothing. There is nothing in Captain Tanner's 

 experience,' — who, as commander of the "Albatross" from 1883 until 

 1894, has had a longer service in deep-sea explorations than any other 

 individual, — or mine, to indicate why the net should act well at 100 llxth- 

 oms and not well at 300 fathoms or more, as suggested by Mr. Murray. 



Subsequently, during the winter of 1893-94 when off the northern coast 

 of Cuba, during my cruise in the "Wild Duck"" I had occasion again to 

 use the modified deep-sea self-closing Tanner net, and found no rea.son 

 to change the views regarding the general bathymetrical di.stribution of 

 pelagic life I had expressed in my Preliminary Report on the Results of 

 the "Albatross" Expedition of 1891. 



In the winter of 1897-98 I also made a number of hauls with the deep- 

 sea self-closing Tanner net at several points in Fiji, the results of which 

 will be found in my Report on the Islands and Coral Reefs of Fiji.'^ 



As long as we have no better acquaintance with the surface fauna of 

 the great oceans than we now possess, it is idle from the few hauls whicii 

 have made us familiar with some of the denizens of a bathymetric belt 



' Z. L. Tanner. On the appliances for collecting pel.agic organisms. Bull. U. S. Fish Commission, 

 Vol. XIV., 1.S95, p. 14;i. 



■' Bull. M. C. Z., XXVl., No. 1, 1894, p 7. 

 8 Bull. M. C. Z., Vol. XXXII., 1899, p. 14. 



