140 The Ottawa Naturalist. [November 



2000 fathoms. Its eyes were very rudimentary — indeed it was al- 

 most blind — and it afforded every evidence that in its abyssmal 

 habitat no light strayed down from the surface waters. The deep 

 sea fauna may however be more varied than Nansen's fragmen- 

 tary investigation appears to indicate. Perhaps the most remark- 

 able facts to the minds of naturalists have been the discovery in 

 polar waters of Copepods which are identical with, or closely 

 allied to, species hitherto found in tropical waters and in 

 some cases not nearer than twelve thousand miles. What 

 can be the meaning of this strange occurrence of the same 

 or similar animals in localities so far asunder ? It is less surpris- 

 ing to find that some Calanoids, small crustaceans rarely larger 

 than a grain of sand, were recognised at once by Sars as species he 

 had got in deep fjords off the west and south shores of Norway, at 

 depths never less than 100 fathoms. The conditions at that depth 

 in the fjords are evidently the same as those characterizing the 

 more superficial Arctic strata. A similar fact has long been 

 known to naturalists in regard to the higher Amphipodan type, 

 Norwegian and Swedish naturalists having described many species 

 of Amphipods which were known to be Arctic also. Species of 

 Calanus are widespread, and along the whole route of the " Fram" 

 specimens were secured in almost every haul. Dr. Sars imagines 

 that these minute crustacean worms have, for the most part, been 

 carried north and east by a warmer Atlantic current flowing from 

 the west beneath the cold Siberian current moving from the east, 

 iust as a cold northern current flows southward along the coast of 

 Nova Scotia on the top of the deeper and warmer water of the 

 Gulf Stream. Contrary to all previous hydrographical experience 

 in the extreme north, the temperature was found by Nansen to 

 rise as the thermometer descends in the water to greater depths, 

 thus showing that the warmer currents referred to permeate and 

 influence the conditions which prevail in the very heart of the ice 

 world. Dr. W. B. Carpenter long advocated an hypothesis that 

 a warm current " interdigitated " with an Arctic stream flowing 

 south, but it had remained for Dr. Nansen to confirm it with some 

 modifications. Nansen explains this deeper warmer current as 

 the last remnants of the Gull Stream spending itself in 

 these frigid zones, a much more questionable theory than 



