THE TROPICAL PACIFIC 351 



that gives us quite a lot to do. We have found at one 

 hundred fathoms pelagic — a very queer fish with eyes 

 at the end of broom handles ! 

 I had never seen anything like 

 it. [Dr.] Chun in the Valdivia 

 got it also, and he says it 's 

 characteristic of very deep 

 water/ and that they get it 

 in their tow nets by sending 

 them way down. The only haul 

 we have made thus far in 2368 



fathoms we came upon bottom made up upon manganese 

 nodules, and brought up a lot of sharks' teeth and whales' 

 ear-bones, hauls the like of which the Challenger made at 

 two or three localities in South Pacific and which Mur- 

 ray called my attention to especially ! We got half a 

 ton of these nodules, and from the character of the bot- 

 tom sample I fancy the whole bed of this part of the 

 Pacific is like that where we trawled. We shall see, I 

 hope soon, at least that is my idea of the nature of the 

 sea bottom in the open Pacific way off from land and in 

 the region of prevailing winds where there are but few 

 pelagic animals to drop upon the bottom. I fancy it 

 must be quite different in the region of calms and I 

 hope to settle this in a few days. . . ." 



September 5. " We are now just on the edge of the 

 Great Equatorial current and to-morrow I expect to be- 

 gin towing and trawling in it. To-day we had in sounding 

 in nearly 2900 fathoms the first sample of Radiolarian 

 ooze bottom I have ever seen, and the Salpae we got at 

 150 fathoms in tow net were filled with specimens of 

 Radiolarians identical with those we got at the bottom 

 (dead) and which my friend Haeckel says live on the 



