181 



The BIOLOGICAL KESULTS of the Cruise of the 



S.Y. "ABGO" round the WEST COAST of 



IBELAND in August, 1890. 



By W. A. Hbrdman, D.Sc, F.L.S., 



PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LIVERPOOL. 



With Plates VIII., IX., X. 



(And an Appendix on Sponges by Dr. E. Hanitsch, with 



Plates XL and XII.) 



[Read February 13th. 1891.] 



Last Summer Mr. Alfred Holt very kindly invited me to 

 be one of the party during a cruise of his steam-yacht 

 " Argo " round the west coast of Ireland ; and he was not 

 only good enough to offer to give me facilities for dredging 

 and collecting animals in other ways whenever possible, 

 but he also, when I suggested the possibility of getting a 

 few hauls of the dredge in deep water, at once agreed to 

 devote a day or two to doing so, and with this object in 

 view he laid in about 1200 fathoms of galvanized steel- 

 wire rope, and devised a small hand winch for winding it 

 in. Unfortunately the exceptionally bad weather we met 

 with off the Donegal Coast prevented us from making any 

 use of this special tackle in deep water ; but we had some 

 hauls of the dredges and trawl at various localities round 

 the coast in depths up to 60 fathoms, and a good deal 

 of tow-netting and some shore. collecting. I took with me 

 a new double or reversible trawl, which worked very 

 satisfactorily, several ordinary naturalist's dredges, one 

 with a semi-circular scraping edge (which we left at the 



