The advantage of the Norwegian fiords for a naturalist who loves to "dredge" is that at many parts of the coast you can sail into water of 200 fathoms depth and more, within three minutes from the rocky shore; and, secondly, that the great passage between the islands and the mainland is, to a very large extent, protected from those movements of the surface which cause such torture to many innocent people who venture on the sea in boats! Accordingly, in 1882, when I heard from the greatest naturalist-dredger of his day--the Rev. Canon Norman, of Durham--that he knew a farmhouse at Lervik, on the island of Stordö, near the mouth of the Hardanger Fiord, between Bergen and Stavanger--where one could stay, and where a boat could be hired for a couple of months--I determined to go there. I was confirmed in my purpose by the fact that Canon Norman had obtained in his dredge, at a spot near Lervik, which he marked for me on the large-scale official map of the region, a very curious little polyp-like animal, attached to and branching on the stems of the white coral which one dredges there at the depth of 150 fathoms. The little animal in quest of which I went, though other wonderful things were to be expected also, had been dredged originally by Dr. Norman off the Shetland Islands, and described by Professor Allman, of Edinburgh. But they had not examined it in the living state with the microscope, and though they showed that it was quite unlike other polyps, yet there was obvious need for further examination of it. I hoped to obtain its eggs and to watch its early growth. The name given to it by Allman was "Rhabdopleura," meaning "rod-walled," alluding to a rod-like cord which runs along the inside of the delicate branching tube (only the one-twentieth of an inch wide), which the little animal constructs and inhabits. I sent a chest containing glass jars, microscopes, books, chemicals, etc., and my dredge, as well as a large windlass, on which was coiled 600 fathoms of rope, by sea to Lervik, and started in early July, with my assistant, Dr. Bourne (afterwards Director of Education in the Madras Presidency), overland, via Copenhagen, for Christiania. Thence we drove in "carioles" across Norway to Laerdalsören, on the west coast, making acquaintance with the magnificent waters--rivers, lakes, and cascades--of that pine-grown land. After visiting the Naerodal and the glaciers which descend from the mountains into the sea on the Fjaerlands Fiord, we took steamer to Lervik, and were welcomed at our farmhouse by its owner, the sister of the member of Parliament for the surrounding region (about four times the area of Yorkshire), whose son secured for me a fair-sized sailing boat, and with two other men of Lervik engaged as my crew for six weeks.