and two miles off shore, they Drought up gravel and two small live crustaceans (Gammarus); in the second, in 3900 ft. and eighteen miles off shore, pebbles and brown clay, with Serpuloe, corallines, crustaceans, and fragments of shells ; in the third, in 6000 ft. and six miles off shore, soft mud, with some worms in it. Again, in a sounding where the depth was 6300 ft., a small starfish was found attached to the line below the point marking 2400 ft.
Mr. Alex. Fisher, in his account of the voyage of the ' Hecla ' and ' Griper ' in 1819-20, states that, in a sounding taken on approaching Lancaster Sound, they brought up from a depth of 5100 ft. mud, with small stones and pieces of broken shells of very delicate texture.
A curious case is recorded in the voyage of the French frigate 'Venus,' in the Pacific, by M. de Tessan in 1838. When near the Equator, a bottle full of fresh water and well corked was attached to the sounding-line near the lead, and let down to the depth of 7500 feet. The bottle came up with the cork forced in, and containing a small living shell of the genus Venus.
Sir James Ross, in his voyage to the Southern and Antarctic Seas, in 1839-43, obtained more definite results. At a depth of 1800 ft. he found " corallines and many animals ;" at 1920 ft. " green mud, with a fragment of starfish and coral ;" while the result of a haul 2400 ft. deep, subsequently examined by Mr. Charles Stokes and Edward Forbes, showed the presence of small corals, pieces of shells, and two joints of a small fossil (?) Pentacrinite, a spine of Cidaris, portions of Echinus, a small broken Cerithium, a fragment of Cleodora, and specimens of Spirorbis on some stones. With these there were Foraminifera of the genera Textularia, Nodosaria, and some others, in abundance.
That the specimens brought up on these occasions were generally fragmentary was almost to be expected.
With the application of the dredge to the purposes of deep-sea exploration, materials for a more exact classification of species according to their bathymetrical range rapidly accumulated ; and in the year 1839 a Committee of the British Association was appointed to carry out a systematic investigation of the seas of the British coasts. In 1840, Prof. E. Forbes, then about to join the surveying- ship ' Beacon ' as naturalist, was requested by the Association to furnish them with a report on the Mollusca and Radiata inhabiting the AEgean Sea. This report * marks an epoch in Natural History and Geology.
- Brit. Assoc. Reports for 1843, p. 173.
d 2
