F. GEOGRAPHY. 127 



From Captain Osborne's researches in regard to deep-sea 

 beds generally, he is inclined to believe that there are no 

 rough ridges, abrupt chasms, nor bare rock, and that the sea 

 bottom at great depths is not affected by currents or streams, 

 even by those of the magnitude of the Gulf Stream, and that 

 it rather resembles the American prairies in general appear- 

 ance, and is every where covered by a kind of mud. 12.4, 

 December 15,133. 



ANTIQUITIES OF THE BLACK SEA. 



The region bordering upon the Black Sea has long been 

 known to be full of antiquarian treasures of the highest in- 

 terest, as evinced by the superb reports published from time 

 to time at the expense of the Russian government. A late 

 exploration of the peninsula of Toman, situated between the 

 Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, in continuation of previous 

 researches, has brought to light many striking objects, par- 

 ticularly of those belonging to a past period of Greek art, 

 and consisting of gold ornaments, sarcophagi, terra-cotta stat- 

 uettes, etc. 13 A, January 15, 1871, 91. 



EXPEDITION OF THE PORCUPINE. 



Mr. Gwyn Jeffries, in a communication to the British Asso- 

 ciation relative to the deep-sea exploring expedition of the 

 Porcupine in the Bay of Biscay and along the Atlantic coast 

 of Spain and Portugal in the year 1869, stated that at depths 

 of about a thousand fathoms many species of mollusca were 

 found in a living state, some of which had been previously 

 regarded as fossil and extinct, and all of them occurring in 

 the newer tertiaries of Sicily and Calabria, and he thought 

 that a record of the fact might lead to the further discovery 

 of the geological phenomena which had caused the fossiliza- 

 tion of so many species in that limited area. Some of them 

 inhabit northern, and even arctic seas. The author suggests 

 whether, in view of the wide distribution of many of the spe- 

 cies of the deep-sea forms of European mollusca, they did not 

 originate in the north, and spread southward in consequence 

 of the great arctic current. He also inquires whether, since 

 the pliocene division of the tertiary formation is found to 

 contain scarcely any extinct species, and, in fact, the percent- 

 age being likely to be reduced to nothing by further explor- 



