8 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGEE. 



eight hours after it was cast over, the dredge was safely hauled on deck, having in the 

 interval accomplished a journey of upwards of eight statute miles. 



This was the deepest haul which was attempted during the second cruise of the 

 PoRCDPlNE, but the same routine proved equally successful on many occasions at depths 

 almost equally great in subsequent cruises under the direction of my colleagues, Dr 

 Carpenter and Dr Gwyn Jeffreys. The mode of working in the Porcupine was the 

 simplest which could be contrived ; we had started, no doubt, with greatly exaggerated 

 ideas of the difficulty of such operations, and it was our constant aim to avoid all 

 apparatus which might possibly go wrong ; and, as these excursions usually lasted only 

 for a short time, to use nothing but such gear as sailors are accustomed to, and 

 require little training to handle. Some slight changes were made in the Challenger, 

 and with our additional experience, in the case of an expedition on so large a scale, 

 the various methods might be elaborated in many ways with advantage, but I am inclined 

 to think that the same general plans which were adopted in the Porcupine would still 

 be the most suitable for a short trip in a vessel of moderate size, with a crew not 

 specially trained. There can be no doubt that in any future expedition, on whatever 

 scale, it would be an unjustifiable waste of time and space to neglect the use of wire 

 for sounding, and wire rope for dredging and trawling, but it seems to me that even 

 the use of these should be simplified and not made more complex. No one who has 

 not had personal experience of the working of machines of any kind in a small vessel 

 in bad weather can form an idea of the risk to the accuracy of the results, to the machines 

 themselves, and to those who handle them. 



The Special Arrangements and Methods used on board the Challenger for 

 Procuring and Preserving Deep-Sea Animals. 



The arrangements on board the Challenger were much the same as those on board 

 the Porcupine, or any other vessel specially fitted for surveying and deep-sea investiga- 

 tion. The only great change which we made in our method was the gradual substitution, 

 during the early part of the voyage, of the beam-trawl for the dredge. For the first few 

 hauls in deep water off the coast of Portugal, the dredge came up full of the usual 

 " globigerina ooze," very uniform throughout ; and the work of hours in sifting gave but a 

 small result. We were anxious to get some idea of the general character of the fauna, and 

 particularly of the distribution of the higher animal groups ; and, after various suggestions 

 for modifying the dredge, it was proposed to try the ordinary trawl. We had a compact 

 well-balanced trawl with a 15-feet beam on board, and we sent it down ofi" Cape St 

 Vincent to a depth of 600 fathoms. The experiment looked hazardous, but to our great 

 satisfaction the trawl came up all right, and contained, along with many of the larger 

 invertebrata, several fishes with what we became accustomed afterwards to recognize 



