358 NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BERMUDAS. 



this wonderful piece of nature's handiwork, which he thinks 

 will prove to be a finer specimen than that of Professor 

 Agissiz. He ends his statement by expressing a hope to 

 forward by the same mail a drawing of the specimen for 

 publication in the Illustrated London News. 



The following account of the " Pelagic Floating Fish- 

 nest," by John Mathew Jones, is taken from Nature, for 

 the week dated April nth, 1872 : — 



Page 462 — " Among other rarities which I have been 

 fortunate enough to procure since my arrival in the Ber- 

 mudas, is a large Pelagic Fish-nest, similar in most respects 

 to that which Agissiz has so recently described, and which 

 was obtained by the American expedition in the Gulf 

 Stream in December last, while on a voyage to the West 

 Indies. As I am very busy at present preserving and 

 packing specimens, and the mail steamer nearly due, I have 

 only time to send you (by way of St. Thomas') a very 

 brief description of my nest, which has been preserved in 

 diluted alcohol. It was taken from a mass of gulf weed 

 {Fucus natans) blown ashore about a month ago. This 

 weed, by the bye, has been especially abundant about the 

 Bermudas during the present winter, thousands upon 

 thousands of tons having been cast on shore by the waves 

 during the stormy weather which has prevailed. The size 

 of the whole mass is about eight inches by five as it hangs 

 suspended, the former measurement being the depth. The 

 weed is thicker at the top, and is woven together by a 

 maze of fine elastic threads, affording a raft, from which 

 depends the clustering mass of eggs, which I cannot illus- 

 trate better than by asking your readers to imagine two or 

 three pounds of No. 7 shot grouped together in bunches 

 of several grains, and held in position by the elastic thread- 

 work previously mentioned. These threads are amazingly 

 strong especially at their terminal bases on the fucus 



