42 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



" Challenger " was at Cape Town he took advantage of the 

 opportunity to search for Peripatus, at Wynberg, on the slopes 

 of Table Mountain, and on his first-found living specimen 

 succeeded in demonstrating its essentially Tracheate nature. 



In his book " Notes of a Naturalist on the ' Challenger,' ' 

 Professor Moseley gives us an interesting account of the deep- 

 sea dredging and sounding, and of the length of time required 

 for these operations on board the " Challenger." At a depth 

 of 4,500 fathoms the sounding weight took an hour and a 

 quarter to reach the bottom, and a much longer time to wind 

 in again. It used to take all day to dredge and trawl at any 

 considerable depth, and the net was usually got in only at 

 night-fall. The ship, when dredging, used to lie rolling about 

 all day drifting along with the wind and dragging the dredge 

 slowly over the bottom. " At last, in the afternoon, the 

 dredge-rope was placed on the drum, and wound in for three 

 or four hours, sometimes longer. Often the rope or net, heavily 

 weighted with mud, hung on the bottom, and there was great 

 excitement as the strain gradually increased on the line. 

 On several occasions the rope broke, and the end disappeared 

 overboard, three or four miles of rope and the dredge being 

 thus lost. At first, when the dredge came up, every man and 

 boy in the ship who could possibly slip away, crowded round 

 it, to see what had been fished up. Gradually, as the novelty 

 of the thing wore off, the crowd became smaller and smaller 

 . . . . and as the same tedious animals kept appearing 

 from the, depths in all parts of the world, the ardour of the 

 scientific staff even abated somewhat, and on some occasions 

 the members were not all present at the critical moment, 

 especially when this occurred in the middle of dinner-time, 

 as it had an unfortunate propensity of doing. It is possible 

 even for a naturalist to get weary of deep-sea dredging. 

 Sir Wyville Thomson's enthusiasm never flagged, and I do 

 not think he ever missed the arrival of the net at the surface."* 



* " Notes of a Naturalist on the ' Challenger,' " p. 501. 



