CHAP. VI.] DEEP-SEA DREDGING. 277 



hour. The dredge was nearly full of a tenacious 

 yellowish mud, through which sparkled innumerable 

 long spicules of the Syalonema ; indeed, if you drew 

 your fingers slowly through the mud, you would 

 thereby gather a handful of these spicules. One 

 specimen of Syalonema, with the long spicules in- 

 serted into the mud and crowned with its expanded 

 sponge-like portions, rewarded my first attempt at 

 dredging at such a depth." ^ This dredging is of 

 especial interest, for it shows that although difllcult 

 and laborious, and attended with a certain amount of 

 risk, it is not impossible in an open boat and with a 

 crew of alien fishermen, to test the nature of the 

 bottom and the character of the fauna, even to the 

 great depth of 500 fathoms. 



In the year 1868, Count L. E. de Pourtales, one, 

 of the officers employed in the United States Coast 

 Survey under Professor Pierce, commenced a series of 

 deep dredgings across the gulf-stream off the coast of 

 Plorida ; which were continued in the following year, 

 and were productive of most valuable results. Many 

 important memoirs at the hands of Count Pourtales, 

 Mr. Alexander Agassiz, Mr. Theodore Lyman and 

 others, have since enriched the pages of the Bulletin of 

 the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and have greatly 

 extended our knowledge of the deep-sea gulf-stream 

 fauna ; and much information has been gained as to 

 the nature of the bottom in those regions, and the 

 changes which are there taking place. Unfortunately 

 a large part of the collections Avere in Chicago in the 



^ Notes on Deep-sea Dredging, by Edward Perceval Wright, M.D., 

 F.L.S., from the Annals and Magazine of Natural History for 

 December 1868. 



