rse can also be
altered during shooting or towing the Blake trawl with far greater
ease than is the case with others. An Agassiz trawl very successful in
the North Sea has the following dimensions: length of the connecting
rods and therefore of the mouth 8 ft., height of runners and of mouth
1 ft. 9 in., extreme length of runners 2 ft., length of net 11 ft. 3
in., weight of whole trawl 94 lb., 63 of which are due to the frame.

It is instructive to note how closely our knowledge of bottom-living
forms has been associated with the instruments of capture in use. As
long as small vessels were used in dredging, the belief that life was
limited to the regions accessible to them was widely spread. The first
known denizens of great depths were the foraminifera and few echinoderms
brought up by various sounding apparatus. Next with the dredge and
tangles the number of groups obtained was much greater. As soon as
trawls were adopted fish began to make their appearance. The greatest
gaps in our knowledge still probably occur in the large and swiftly
moving forms, such as fish and cephalopods. As we can hardly hope to
move apparatus swiftly over the bottom in great depths, the way in which
improvement is possible probably is that of increasing the spread of the
nets; and a start in this direction appears to have been made by Dr
Petersen, who has devised a modified otter sieve which catches fish at
all events very well, and has been operated already at considerable
depths.

Of the economy of quite shallow seas, however, we are still largely
ignorant. Much as has been learnt of the bionomics of the sea, it is but
a commencement; and this is of course especially true of deep seas. The
dredge and its kindred have, however, in less than a century enabled
naturalists to compile an immense mass of knowledge of the structure,
development, affinities and distribution of the animals of the sea-bed,
and in the most accessible seas to produce enumerations and
morphological accounts of them of some approach to completeness.
(J. O. B.)

DRELINCOURT, CHARLES (1595-1669), French Protestant divine, was born at
Sedan on the 10th of July 1595. In 1618 he undertook the charge of the
French Protestant church at Langres, but failed to receive the necessary
royal sanction, and early in 1620 he removed to Paris, where he was
nominated minister of the Reformed Church at Charenton. He was the
author of a large number of works in d