USES or THE TOW-NET 53 



larger objects captured have settled, is removed for 

 future examination, and the net is turned inside out 

 and carefully washed in a bowl of sea-water for the 

 multitude of minute animals that have become 

 entangled in its threads. 



I never put out the tow-net when we were dredg- 

 ing, because it was usually more than I could do to 

 attend to the trawl and swabs before their contents 

 began to decay ; but it was our invariable rule to send 

 it overboard whenever the ship was at anchor, or 

 when she slowed down to take a deep sounding 

 merely. 



I shall never forget my first few days with the 

 washings from the tow-net, when for the first time 

 in my life I saw the living Globigerina, whose shells 

 form the ooze, and Thalassicolla, and Ascidian tad- 

 poles, and the larvae of Amphioxus and Lingttla, and 

 the living mechanism of a host of other transparent 

 oceanic animals which up to that time I had known 

 only from books and pictures. 



At the end of my first week on board, the ship 

 left Port Blair to carry a small political mission to 

 the Little Andaman, an island that lies about 25 miles 

 southerly of the main Andaman chain, and whose 

 savage little inhabitants were at that time (1888) not 

 quite under control, and, indeed, had very little respect 

 for anybody. 



On reaching the island, it was not deemed prudent 



