Throughout the voyage MacGillivray and Huxley busied themselves with
collecting animals on sea and on shore. MacGillivray seems to have
taken for his share of the spoil chiefly such animals as provided
shells or skins or skeletons suitable for handing over to museums.
Huxley occupied himself incessantly with dissecting tools and with the
microscope, with results to be described in a later chapter. The
better equipped expeditions of modern times were provided with
elaborate appliances for bringing up samples of living creatures from
all depths of the floor of the ocean, and with complicated towing nets
for securing the floating creatures of the surface of the seas. The
_Rattlesnake_ naturalists had to content themselves with simple
apparatus devised by themselves. At an early period of the voyage
attempts were made to take deep soundings, but no bottom was reached
at a depth of two thousand four hundred fathoms, and their later work
was confined to surface animals or to inshore dredging in shallow
waters. They began near Rio.
"None of the ship's boats could be spared, so I [MacGillivray]
hired one pulled by four negro slaves who, although strong,
active fellows, had great objections to straining their backs at
the oar, when the dredge was down.
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