SEA-FISHERIES LABORATORY. 141 
in the chart-room. Other meteorological apparatus is 
not yet provided. 
Sounding is carried on, when scientific work is being 
done, by means of the smaller Lucas Automatic Sounding 
Machine. ‘This is fixed on a portable bracket which is 
carried on the rail just forward of the bridge deck. 
Lighter apparatus, such as thermometer frames, can be 
worked from the steel wire of the sounding machine. 
Instead of the ordinary pianoforte wire usually employed 
with this machine, a strand of seven No. 25 galvanised 
steel wires is used with twenty-pound leads. 
The Nansen-Pettersson water-bottle is worked by. 
means of a steel wire rope, consisting of six strands each 
of eighteen wires, and coreless. The rope is half an inch 
in circumference, and has a breaking strain of 35 ecwts. 
. This is stronger than is required for the water-bottle, but 
the wire rope can also be used for the pelagic nets, and 
economy of apparatus is secured. The wire 1s carried on 
a portable drum which is fitted on to the accessory winch. 
The wire passes from the latter (see figs. 1 and 2) aft to the 
metre-wheel, which hooks on to a detachable screw 
eye-bolt let into a socket on the deck. The wire then 
passes over a snatch block at the davit head. The drum 
of the accessory winch is a “ free-wheel”’ which runs out 
easily. When the bottle is hauled a collar with 
projecting lugs is tightened against the end of the drum, 
and the latter is worked by starting the trawl winch. 
The defect of this arrangement is, of course, that the 
drum cannot be revolved very rapidly. In a sounding in 
water of 145 fathoms about six minutes were required to 
haul the apparatus, but since the great majority of 
hydrographic soundings to be made in the Irish Sea deal 
with water of twenty to forty fathoms in depth, this 
slowness of hauling is a matter of no importance. 
