THE WORK OF THE "ALBATROSS" 249 



the sea for a few minutes. After the net is swung aboard, the load is 

 dropped on the gratings of the washing table by taking off the lashing 

 around the end of the net, and the hose is turned on to wash the mud 

 away from the specimens. Most of these fish of the deep-sea are small 

 but strange enough in comparison with the surface fish. Many are 

 slate colored ; a few partake of reddish brown ; and some are inky black 

 with a row of phosphorescent spots along each side which, in the utter 

 darkness of their native depths, must glow like the portholes of a 

 steamer at night. The other specimens in the net may show that the 

 dredge has been drawn through a bed of siliceous sponges, of crinoids, 

 or of Venus's flower baskets, or through a multitude of starfishes and 

 sea-urchins. Still other dredge loads vnzy yield small sea-snails and 

 bivalves, weak and awkward spider crabs and many smaller crabs, the 

 omnipresent shrimp, a few sea-cucumbers, squids, basket-stars, sand- 

 dollars, beautiful sea-fans, hydroids and solitary corals, with jelly fish 

 probably from intermediate depths. In the crevices of pieces of coral 

 and sponge broken off by the dredge, are also found numbers of tiny 

 fish, small crabs and worms. Finally, samples of the sand and shell 

 fragments are dried and taken for specimens. 



The routine of the dredging is sometimes broken by fishing for 

 sharks with hook and line from the ship's side. Several blocks and 

 chips of wood, which had been thrown overboard a few hours before, 

 were taken from the stomach of one shark caught in this way, together 

 with scraps from the ship's galley. Once a few small whales were seen 

 spouting among the dazzling ripples of the early morning; and schools 

 of porpoises have often lumbered past the ship, their huge bodies 

 tumbling over and over one another in short, low curves. 



In the evening, while the strains of the ship's phonograph and the 

 thrumming of a Filipino mandolin or guitar drift back from the fore- 

 ward deck, the fishing gear is brought out again, if the water at the 

 anchorage is quiet, and often most interesting results are obtained by 

 scooping up with a fine meshed dip-net the hundreds of little creatures 

 which are attracted to a submarine electric light. Not only such fish 

 as herrings, anchovies and half-beaks, with now and then an excited 

 flying-fish, but many squids darting back and forth more swiftly than 

 the fish, small crustaceans, jelly-fishes and phosphorescent worms are 

 taken ; and sometimes a water snake writhes across the edge of the outer 

 shadow, or the dark form of a shark glides under the vessel. 



The work of the Albatross has been thorough along the line which 

 has been her specialty on this cruise. It is seldom that any region can 

 be carefully surveyed by an expedition carrying the equipment of the 

 Albatross and detailed for so long a time as this ship has been to the 

 study of the fish and the fishery resources of so rich a collecting ground 

 as the waters of the Philippine Islands. Still, this work has been that 



