comparable with those of which we have experience
in the upper world could live at the hottom of the
deep sea, as that they could live in a vacuum, or in
the fire. Of many of the conditions at great depths
we as yet knew nothing, but some of them w’ere as
easily determined by calculation as by direct experiment,
and w’e knew that an animal at a depth of
1,000 fathoms must hear a w’eiglit of a ton on
the square inch, and one at a depth of 3,000
the almost inconceivable weight of three tons;
and we had every reason to believe that the sun’s
light is almost entirely cut off at a depth of 50
fathoms, and that therefore the existence of plants
upon which animals primarily depend for their food
is impossible at great depths. These considerations
alone seemed almost sufficient to place this question
beyond the region of reasonable inquiry, and it w’as
not until a considerable amount of evidence had been
brought foiuvard, that wdiat wms called the ‘ antibiotic’
prejudice Avas in any degree overcome.
About this time, another class of facts which gave
the whole subject a singular interest, were forcing
themselves upon the attention of naturalists. Some
dredgers, particularly our indefatigable brother-
naturalists of Scandinavia, pushed their dredging
operations to the utmost limit practicable in the
northern seas by ordinary means, to depths of from
300 to TOO fathoms, and they found, contrary to
the general impression of the British school, that
at these depths there was no lack of animal life,
and that further, many of the animal forms were
new and unfamiliar, while many showed a much
closer relation to the inhabitants of the seas of
former geological periods than to the marine fauna
of the present day.
In the year 1868, when the question was thus undecided,
Dr. Carpenter and I, looking at the matter
chiefly as one of scientific interest, hut at the same
time fully recognising the practical importance of
many of the results of such an investigation, induced
the Council of the Royal Society to apply to the
i^dmiralty to place means at our disposal to go iuto
the AA'hole question of the physical and biological conditions
of the sea-hottom, in the neighbourhood of
the British ] slands but beyond the range of ordinary
boat work. The Admiralty assented, and, in the
autumn of 1868, through about two months of
Avretched Aveather, Ave knocked about in the ‘ Lisrlit-
ning,’ a somewhat precarious little gun-hoat, between
Scotland and Daeroe.
Nine tolerable days fortunately checkered the
uniformity of the heavy Aveather, and on these we
registered some remarkable results.
We found that there Avas abundance of animal
life at the bottom of the sea to a depth of 600
lathoms at least, and that the life there AA’as not
confined to the more simply organized animals, hut
extended very irrespectively through all the invertebrate
classes, and even included some true bony
fishes. We found that the general character of the
fauna at these depths Avas not such as to indicate a
mere gradual disappearance of the knoAvn fauna of
the British ocean, but aa’es in many respects peculiar,
and presented many characters in common Avith the
faunae of older times. We found that, instead of
having a constant and universal temperature of D C.