Beebe's Progress

William Beebe, with his marine expedition aboard the steamship A returns (TIME, Feb. 16, Mar. 9, Mar. 16), having perused the Sargasso Sea amid high waves, and drawn up from great depth small fishes--red, black, silver, transparent, luminous, stalk-eyed, snake-jawed; but being continuously disturbed by high waves which scattered the Sargassum weed, secured in one haul in his last day there five Amphioxii (believed to have been the intermediate stage between invertibrate and vertibrate life). They have a cartilaginous backbone. The value of the catch is that hitherto Amphioxii have seldom been known far from shore.

Then Mr. Beebe sailed towards the Caribbean and, within the Leeward Islands, began to investigate Saba Bank in shallow waters 36 to 2,700 feet deep. A green and yellow octopus, an irridescent bronze colored fish found living inside a giant red sea-cucumber, butterfly fish, trigger fish and porcupine fish were procured as well as whole colonies of coral and sponges.

The Arcturus is soon to go to Panama to coal; will cross into the Pacific to investigate marine life in the Humboldt Current before returning to the Sargasso Sea in July, when calmer weather is hoped for.