Hamilton. — On our Knoidedge of tJie Oceanic Areas. Ill 



of liberally presenting copies of it to scientific institutions 

 throughout the world, the publications could have been made 

 to pay their own expenses by sales. Practically, the whole 

 of the work of arranging for the proper (iescription of the great 

 mass of zoological material brought home has fallen to Mr., 

 now Dr., John Murray, and he has brought to a successful 

 conclusion the issue of the fifty quarto volumes in which 

 specialists in all parts of the world have described the trea- 

 sures brought home. In zoology particularly the researches 

 of the " Challenger " have enabled a new division to be made 

 of the fauna of the ocean into three groups : a group that 

 drifts, a group that swims, and a group that is anchored. 



The first group, or the Plankton, embraces all those pelagic 

 forms that float about at the mercy of the winds and tidal 

 currents, drifting with the tide on the " shifting currents of 

 the restless main." 



The second group are the Nekton, also pelagic in their 

 habits, but able to swim against the currents or migrate from 

 place to place. 



The third group, the Benthos, are animals and plants that 

 are fixed to the bottom, or that live within circumscribed limits 

 on the bottom, and are unable to migrate at will, nor can they 

 be carried about by the sweep of a current or tide. 



With regard to the Plankton, Professor Haeckel says, 

 " With the exception of the deep-sea Keratosa, my own con- 

 tributions to the ' Challenger ' work concern the Plankton, 

 and have proved that it is just the smallest pelagic animals 

 which possess the greatest importance for oceanic" life. As 

 I wandered for ten years though this wonderful new empire, 

 populated by more than four thousand species of Eadiolaria, 

 for the most part previously unknown, and as I daily admired 

 the incredible variety and elegance of their delicate forms, I 

 had the happy and proud sensations of the explorer who is 

 the first to travel through a new continent peopled by thou- 

 sands of new and curious forms of animals and plants." The 

 abysmal deeps again contain a new world inhabited by Ben- 

 thos, strangely-formed genera, and species who have slowly 

 migrated through various environments to the ocean-depths. 



In geology the information obtained regarding the deposits 

 now^ forming on the ocean-floor has been of great importance, 

 but those who hoped that the dredge would drag from the 

 ocean caves " the monsters vast of ages past," and that the 

 hauls would yield many living forms of Tertiary types, have 

 been disappointed. The botanical work has been mainly in 

 the direction of extending our knowledge of the flora of the 

 oceanic areas at a distance from land-masses; and in some 

 cases additional information has been recorded on the floras 

 of the more remote islands. The results of the expedition 

 12 



