VllI INTRODUCTION. 



Printing Office, bus also aided materially in the work by Ids advice. Mr. Barton A. Bean 

 has aided in the handling of the collections and illustrations and measurement of speci- 

 mens, and Mr. J. Tj. Willige has rendered useful service iu the preparation of the tables of 

 locality and distribution aiul in proof reading. 



Only twenty years ago the flsh fauna of the deep sea was represented in collections by 

 forty or fifty specim<>ns, representing not more than twenty species at the most — acci- 

 dental waifs picked up at the surface or cast ashore by the waves — "like the few stray 

 bodies of strange red men which tradition reports to have been washed on the shores of 

 the Old World before the discovery of the New, and which served to indicate the existence 

 of unexplored realms inhabited by unknown races, but not to supply information about their 

 character, habits, and history." ' 



If the coming twenty years shall produce one-tenth so much in the way of discovery in 

 the life of the deep seas, it will be more than it now seems reasonable to expect. 



G. Brown Gooue. 

 Tableton H. Bean. 



Smithsonian Institution, 



Washington City, April 1, 1895. 



' Edward Forbes. 



