160 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



groups of animals or plants ; for, as each haul of the 

 dredge or tow-net brings up material for each worker, it 

 is easy for everyone, after he has picked out his own beasts 

 from a quantity of weed, &c, to pass it on to his next 

 neighbour, who takes out his, and again passes it on. 

 This ensures a thorough overhauling of all material, and 

 it frequently happened that after I had picked out, as I 

 thought, all the Amphipoda, Mr. Gamble, to whom I 

 passed it for Nudibranchs, Planarians, &c, would find 

 two or three more. 



Thanks to a grant from the Koyal Society, we had a 

 sailing trawler of about 30 tons at our disposal, but it 

 must be confessed that she was not as useful as could 

 have been wished. There was generally either too little 

 wind or too much, and in the latter case the huge 

 Atlantic rollers made dredging almost, if not quite, 

 impossible. However, a few excursions were made in 

 her, and were not without results, but we never got into 

 more than 40 or 50 fathoms depth. In the harbour we 

 could always dredge, but there is nowhere more than 9 

 fathoms. The bottom is very variable, generally rocky, 

 with much Laminaria, but in some places sandy. South 

 of the Ferry Pier there is a bed of very fine, soft mud in 

 1J fathoms, which I found very productive of Crustacea 

 when worked with the rake and tow-net. This apparatus, 

 which consists of a muslin or cheese-cloth tow-net attached 

 to a weighted iron rake, was found most successful in 

 taking not only free-swimming animals at the bottom, 

 but also Nudibranchs, &c. In working the mud it was 

 necessary to attach the tow-net so as to be 4 or 5 feet 

 behind the rake, and even then it filled in a few minutes. 

 The contents (mostly mud) were then emptied into a bucket 

 which was taken to the laboratory, where it was left to 

 stand. As the mud settled the Crustacea worked their way 



