NOTES 445 



seat is in Paris, where it possesses its own buildings and a rich endowment, 

 both of them the gift of the Prince. It has professors of physical and bio- 

 logical oceanography and of the physiology of marine animals, and the lec- 

 tures delivered during last year had the most numerous attendance of any 

 in Paris. During the life of the Prince he exercises supreme authority. 

 Both in Paris and at Monaco there is complete organisation for giving effect 

 to his wishes, and in the event of his death, for carrying on the work without 

 interruption, and on the lines inaugurated by himself. This continuity 

 and permanence have been assured. 



" It will be readily realised that the establishment of these two great 

 institutions has not been accomplished without the expenditure of large 

 sums of money and the devotion of much time and labour to it. It is almost 

 impossible for anyone to realise the greatness of the work which is being 

 accomplished without having been intimately connected with it, and even 

 with this advantage the development of the conception is slow. As with 

 an great achievements, it wiU take at least a generation before it is thoroughly 

 understood and adequately appreciated. 



" The museum at Monaco bears testimony at every turn to the great 

 lines on which the Prince has himself worked, and in which his work is funda- 

 mental. Thus, in the purely hydrographical department, we see his bathy- 

 metrical chart of the world, on which all the trustworthy deep soundings 

 are entered. This great document may be said to be the foundation-stone 

 of oceanographical work. Another and much earlier piece of hydrographical 

 w^ork is the current chart of the North Atlantic, which gives the results of 

 his laborious work on board the Hirondelle. By the methodical dispersion 

 of floats, especially constructed to expose the least possible surface above 

 water, along different lines radiating generally from the group of the Azores, 

 by patiently awaiting their recovery, and by then combining their records, 

 he furnished the demonstration that this portion of the ocean is practically 

 a lake, bounded, not by land, but by the motion of its own peripheral waters, 

 thus enclosing a roughly circular portion of the sea, part of which is generally 

 associated with the Sargassum weed and called the Sargasso Sea. The 

 water, thus self-confined in the warm, dry subtropical region, is exposed to 

 powerful evaporation, and to a considerable annual variation of temperature 

 at the surface. The combination of these two thermal factors furnishes 

 the mechanical power by which the deeper layers of the water obtain more 

 heat and attain a greater density in this sea than they do in any other part 

 of the open ocean. 



" In the museum, room is provided for a department of meteorology, 

 a science which, especially as regards its application to the higher regions 

 of the atmosphere, owes much to the participation of the Prince in its develop- 

 ment. Until he directed his attention to it, the ballons-sonde, carrying their 

 freight of valuable instruments, were very frequently lost. Now, thanks 

 to the method of keeping the ' dead reckoning ' of the balloon, developed 

 and brought to perfection on the Princess Alice, if it is followed for a few min- 

 utes during its ascent, it may disappear in the clouds, and its recovery, when 

 it descends at sea, is almost a certainty. This department of investigation 

 has been prosecuted outside the Mediterranean, and in the Prince's cruises 

 of the last two or three years it has been carried from the Cape Verde Islands 

 in the heart of the tropics to the north of Spitsbergen, within five hundred miles 

 of the Pole. 



" Besides the collections of animals and the instruments for their capture 

 and study, there is in the lower part of the museum an aquarium, remarkable 

 for its size and the completeness of its installation. This already commands 

 a constant flux of visitors, chiefly the curious, but it is also frequented by 

 men of science for serious study. It is already proposed to enlarge it con- 

 siderably. The story above the aquarium is divided into separate labora- 



