62 
over again 1 made artificial fertilizations of various forms of Echi- 
noids and Asteroids, but I never succeeded in rearing the embryos 
beyond the very first stages. This was a great disappointment to 
me, as I hoped especially here to get the opportunity of rearing 
the larvæ of such interesting forms as Echinostrephus and Coelo- 
pleurus, which were both ripe at the time of my stay here. I can 
State now with certainty that the latter has pelagic larvæ; I did, 
however, not succeed in rearing them so far as to the beginning 
formation of the skeleton. 
An involuntary visit of some few days to the bay of Saparoea 
on the little island of that name E.of Ambon, due to unfavourable 
weather which did not permit continuing the passage across the 
Banda Sea with the small “Amboina”, gave as result some valuable 
ecological observations on the shallow-water fauna of the fine, very 
sheltered harbour. Otherwise hardly anything could be done. In 
the Inner Bay (the harbour), the bottom was a very soft, white 
coral mud, with a very poor fauna only, making dredging very 
unprofitable; outside the harbour the bottom proved so full of rocks, 
that dredging was impossible, resulting only in the loss of a dredge. 
II. The Kei Islands. 
Researches on the fauna and biological conditions of the seas 
round the Kei Islands were first undertaken by the “Challenger’^ 
Expedition, which in September 1874 made a dredging (Station 192) 
S. of the little Island of Taam in a depth of 129 fathoms, the quite 
extraordinary success of which made it one of the very richest hauls 
of the whole Expedition. Especially the surprising faet that numbers 
of truly abyssal forms oceurred here in so relatively shallow water 
made this haul exceptionally interesting, indicating that very unusual 
physical and biological conditions must exist here. The “Siboga 
again made a dredging here (St. 253, in a depth of 304 Meters) 
with similar results. Two more deep water dredgings (St. 254, in 
a depth of 310 M., and St. 256, in 397 M.) were made by the ‘‘Si¬ 
boga” in the sea between the Kei and the Tajando Islands, and 
four more in the Strait between Great Kei and Little Kei, viz. one 
(St. 259, depth 487 M.) in the northern part, one (St. 260, depth 
90 M. only) off Elat, and two (St. 262, depth 560 M., and St. 266, 
depth 595 M.) in the Southern end of the strait. A few dredgings 
