6*2 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Whilst I was taking' these samples in Hip open sea, 

 almost daily, from the yacht, Mr. Dong-las Laurie, with 

 a crew of students from the Biological Station, simultane- 

 ously took similar samples inside Port Erin Bay in com- 

 paratively sheltered water. In 23 working days I tind 

 that we took in all 276 samples, an average of 12 per day. 

 It will be readily understood by anyone who has carried 

 on such work continuously, with varied weather, thai it 

 was a busy time; and that on some days we were fairly 

 wet, without any time to get cold, from morning till 

 night. So much practical work could only be carried on 

 with the willing help of several assistants. All on board 

 the yacht helped in various ways, but I must thank 

 especially Mr. Buchanan- Wollaston who assisted me in 

 working the nets, Mr. Chadwick who preserved most of 

 the material in the laboratory at the end of each day's 

 work, and Mr. Andrew Scott, A.L.S., who has systemati- 

 cally examined the samples for me. A detailed account 

 of these gatherings will appear elsewhere ; I propose at 

 present to discuss only some of the more obvious features 

 of the series — partly from my own records made at the 

 time of collection and partly from Mr. Scott's notes. 



At each station, after taking the bearings and the 

 depth, we first lowered two vertical nets (see figs. 5, 0, 7 

 and 8, from photos taken by Mr. 11. Okell), the Petersen- 

 Hensen and the Nansen, to a depth of 20 fathoms, pulled 

 them up slowly through 10 fathoms, and then closed them 

 by " messengers " run down the line. This gave us 

 samples, taken vertically with these two very different 

 nets, of the organisms present in the water between 10 

 and 20 fathoms. After that three ordinary horizontal 

 open tow-nets exactly alike in all respects (size, shape, 

 mesh, age) were pnt over — one (A) with a weight attached 

 was allowed to sink to a depth of about 10 fathoms, from 



