GEOGRAPHY AND ANTIQUITIES. 321 



sian Imperial Geographical Society, that our countryman will 

 then have a free passage granted to him through all Russian 

 Turkistan. It is thus that our science makes its cultivators of 

 every nation as kindly and considerate to each other as free- 

 masons. Let me add that the Royal Geographical Society has 

 awarded its founder's gold medal to this brave and energetic 

 man ; and we fervently hope that he will come home through 

 Russia before next year, to receive his well-merited reward. 



"The remarkable additions to geographical and natural his- 

 tory knowledge, which have been made of late years by sound- 

 ing and dredging at great depths in the ocean, have excited 

 the liveliest interest. The attention of modern geographers was 

 long ago directed to this subject by Parry, James Ross, and 

 Captain Denham, R.N. The last of these measured downwards 

 in the ocean, between South America and the Cape of Good 

 Hope, to the great depth of 7,706 fathoms, and thus enabled 

 geographers to realize the aphorism of Alexander Humboldt, 

 that the greatest depth of the 'sea would be found to be at 

 least equal to the height of the loftiest mountains. Subsequently 

 Dr. Wallich, who ably served as the naturalist on board the 

 ' Bulldog,' commanded by Sir Leopold McClintock, enunciated 

 the then novel and surprising truth that certain marine animals 

 (including star-fish) lived at the depth of 1,260 fathoms, and even 

 preserved their colors when brought to the surface. More re- 

 cently, the scientific explorations of the deep-sea to the north 

 and west of the British Isles, as conducted by Dr. W. Carpen- 

 ter, Mr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys, and Professor Wyvilie Thomson, 

 have thrown much new light on this attractive subject. They 

 have vastly extended our acquaintance with many submarine 

 data, including the temperature of the sea at various depths, 

 and have proved that currents of different temperatures each 

 containing a characteristic fauna are running, as it were, 

 alongside of each other, or in contiguity, beneath the surface 

 of the sea. These data, and a consideration of the various 

 species of marine animals which were found, are supposed to 

 have had such material bearings on geological science that it 

 would be a dereliction of my duty as an old geologist if I were 

 not to endeavor to disentangle the unquestionably true, novel, 

 and even startling facts which these researches have made known, 

 from one of those speculations which the eminent leader of this 

 expedition has connected with them, and which, if acquiesced in, 

 might seriously affect the inductions and belief of practical 

 geologists. 



" Dr. W. Carpenter, in a lecture given in the Royal Institution, 

 in summing up his views as to the effects of the discoveries then 

 made, thus spoke : ' The facts which I have brought before 

 you, yet still more the speculations which I have ventured to con- 

 nect with them, may seem to unsettle much that has been gener- 

 ally accredited to geological science, and thus to diminish rather 

 than to augment our stock of positive knowledge ; but this is the 

 necessary result of the introduction of a new idea into any depart- 

 ment of scientific inquiry.' To this statement I beg to demur. 



