president's addkess. 113 



Cork, where we coaled, and then stood out towards some sound- 

 ings about a couple of hundred of miles S.AV. of TJshant, marked 

 on the Admiralty Chart 2,000 fathoms and upwards. On the 

 20th and 21st we took a few hauls of the dredge on the slope of 

 the great plateau in the mouth of the Channel, in depths from 

 75 to 725 fathoms, and on the 22nd we sounded with a 'Hydra' 

 sounding apparatus, the depth 2,435 fathoms, with a bottom of 

 fine Atlantic Chalk-Mud, and a temperature registered by two 

 standard Miller-Six's thermometers of 36-5° Fah. 



"A heavy dredge was put over in the afternoon, and slowly 

 the great coil of rope melted from the ' Aunt Sallies,' as we call 

 a long line of iron bars, with round Avooden heads, on which the 

 coils are hung. In about an hour the dredge reached the bottom 

 upwards of three miles off. 



' ' The dredge remained down about three hours, the Captain 

 moving his ship slowly up to it from time to time, and anxiously 

 watching the pulsations of the accumulator, ready to meet and 

 ease any undue strain. At nine o'clock p.m. the drums of the 

 donkey engine began to turn, and gradually and steadily the 

 ' Aunt Sallies ' filled up again at the average rate of about two 

 feet of rope a second. A few minutes before one o'clock in the 

 morning two hundredweight of iron, the weights fixed 500 fathoms 

 from the dredge, came up, and at one o'clock precisely a cheer 

 from a breathless little band of watchers intimated that the dredge 

 had returned in safety from its wonderful and perilous Journey 

 of more than six statute miles. A slight accident' had occurred. 

 In going down the rope had taken a loop round the dredge, so 

 that the bag was not full. It contained, however, enough for 

 our purpose, one and a half hundredweight of Atlantic ooze, and 

 so the feat was accomplished. Some of us tossed ourselves down 

 on the sofas, without taking off our clothes, to wait till daylight 

 to see what was in the dredge. 



''The next day we dredged again in 2,090 fathoms, practically 

 the same depth, and brought up two hundredweight of ooze; the 

 bottom temperature 36-4°; and we spent the rest of the day in 

 making what will, I am sure, prove a most valuable series of 



I 



