292 DEEP-SEA EXPLORING EXPEDITION 



waters little or no scientific investigation has been carried on. 

 The Society islands will be first visited, although the vessel will 

 touch at the Marquesas islands for coal. Between San Fran- 

 cisco and Tahiti, a distance of 3,500 miles, dredging and sound- 

 ing will be carried on at regular intervals on a section of the 

 sea-bottom almost wholly unexplored. Tahiti will be the head- 

 quarters while the Society islands and the Paumota islands are 

 being explored. In the latter archipelago, which is about 600 

 miles long, six or eight weeks will be spent and important sci- 

 entific discoveries should be made. In the Tonga or Friendly 

 islands, distant about 1,500 miles from the Society group, a 

 week or ten days will be passed. The vessel will then proceed 

 to the Fiji islands, where a short stay will be made, and thence 

 1,700 miles to the Marshall islands, in which interesting archi- 

 pelago, of whose natural history almost nothing is known, six 

 or seven weeks will be devoted to exploration. The Ellice and 

 Gilbert islands, lying between the Fiji and Marshall islands, 

 will also be visited. It was originally the intention to have the 

 Albatross proceed from the Marshall islands to the Hawaiian 

 islands and thence to San Francisco, running a line of deep-sea 

 dredgings along the entire route; but, owing to the prevalence 

 of head winds at the time when the vessel will be ready to leave 

 the Marshall islands, this plan has been abandoned, and instead 

 the vessel will sail for Japan, making frequent use of the dredge 

 and the deep-sea tow-net and setting the trawl in the moderately 

 deep water off the Japan coast, where the fishermen are contin- 

 ually bringing up curious forms. The voyage of nearly 20,000 

 miles will come to an end at Yokohama, where the Albatross will 

 arrive in April, 1900, and refit for a summer cruise to Alaska to 

 resume the systematic examination of the salmon streams begun 

 several years ago. 



The leading features of the expedition will be deep-sea dredg- 

 ing, traAvling, and sounding, and some special appliances for such 

 work have been constructed. A wire dredge-rope 6,000 fathoms 

 long has been made to order, and to accommodate this enormous 

 quantity a special drum has had to be prepared. It is expected 

 that both the dredge and the beam-trawl will be hauled in deeper 

 water than heretofore. One of the novel pieces of collecting 

 apparatus is a beam-trawl of unprecedentedly large size, espe- 

 cially designed for the capture of larger animals than can be 

 taken with the usual apparatus. What results may attend its 

 use can only be conjectured. The iron framework consists of 



