ill
water or with a very slight current the dredge of course anchors the
boat, and oars or sails are necessary; but if the boat be moving at all
it is all that is required. It is perhaps most pleasant to dredge with
a close-reefed sail before a light wind, with weights, against a very
slight tide or current; but these are conditions which cannot be
commanded. The dredge may remain down from a quarter of an hour to
twenty minutes, by which time, if things go well, it ought to be fairly
filled. In dredging from a small boat the simplest plan is for two or
three men to haul in, hand over hand, and coil in the bottom of the
boat. For a large yawl or yacht, and for depths over 50 fathoms, a winch
is a great assistance. The rope takes a couple of turns round the winch,
which is worked by two men, while a third hand takes it from the winch
and coils it down.

It is easier to operate a dredge from a steam vessel than a sailing
boat, but if the steamer is of any size great care should be taken that
the dredge does not move too rapidly.

Two ingenious cases of dredging under unusual conditions are worthy of
mention, one case from shore, one from ice. In the Trondligem Fjord,
Canon A. M. Norman in 1890 worked by hauling the dredge up the
precipitous shores of the fjord. The dredge was shot from a boat close
to the shore, to which after paying out some hundreds of fathoms of line
it returned. The dredge was then hauled from the top of the cliffs up
whose side it scraped. Hitches against projecting rocks were frequent
and were overcome by suddenly paying out line for a time. The dredge was
lifted into a boat when it reached the surface of the sea. The other
case occurred during the Antarctic expedition of the "Discovery."
Hodgson dropped loops of line along cracks which occasionally formed in
the ice. The ice always joined up again, but with the line below it; and
a hole being cleared at each place at which the end of the line emerged,
the dredge could be worked between them.

The dredge comes up variously freighted according to the locality, and
the next step is to examine its contents and to store the objects of
search for future use. In a regularly organized dredging expedition a
frame or platform is often erected with a ledge round it to receive the
contents of the dredge, but it does well enough to capsize it on an old
piece of tarpaulin. There are two ways of emptying the dredge; we may
either turn it up and pour out its co