1894- SOME NEW BOOKS. 385 



The Fauna of the Deep Sea. By S. J. Hickson, M.A., D.Sc. Modern Science 

 Series. Pp. xvi., 169. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1894 

 Price 2S. 6d. 



In this interesting little book, which we are prevented by its title from 

 calling superficial, Dr. Hickson deals in a readable and commendably 

 brief way with recent enquiries into the nature and habits of animals 

 living at great depths. The subject is alluring to everybody, and the 

 " general reader " will, we imagine, not be disappointed with what 

 Dr. Hickson has to offer him. The more seriously minded and 

 expert reader will not of course expect a detailed discussion of the 

 problems arising out of the facts. Nor would they indeed be entirely 

 in place in a short epitome of this kind. Dr. Hickson begins his 

 preface by saying, quite melodramatically, that "a time may come " when 

 the bottom of the sea will be thoroughly known. At present it is as 

 he justly, though hibernically, intimates a large terya incognita. Still a 

 fair amount is known, and mainly, as everybody admits, through the 

 results of the " Challenger " voyage. The uninstructed devourer of 

 Mr. Hickson's pages will be struck with the satanic aspect of many 

 of the deep-sea fishes. The piscine countenance is not formed for 

 the presentation of beauty, but it is rarely that such malevolence is to 

 be read there as in the case of these particular fishes. Moreover, the 

 reader will also learn that the features are an index to the dispositions 

 of their possessors. So ferociously carnivorous are some of these 

 fish that they will without the least hesitation swallow a neigh- 

 bour ever so much larger than themselves. Kindly nature, who in 

 this quarter of the world is particularly "red in tooth and claw," 

 has aided and abetted them in this course of action by endowing them 

 with unusually extensile stomachs. Their voracity, however, is not 

 always unpunished ; for many other animals, which would be liable 

 to fall victims to these cannibals, have put on an extensive armature 

 of spines ; anyone who consults the sumptuous plates of the 

 " Challenger Monographs " will soon meet with figures of Crustacea 

 which are only to be compared with hedgehogs. Luckily there is a 

 limit to this indiscriminate feeding off one another in the deep sea, or 

 its fauna would by this time have arrived at the condition of the 

 crew of the " Nancy Bell." Some years ago Dr. Moebius wrote a 

 paper entitled " Wo kommt dann die Nahrung der Tiefseefauna aus ? " 

 in which it was sought to prove that the animals of the abysses chiefly 

 depended upon the surface waters for their food-supply. From them 

 tjjere falls a constant and abundant rain of the dead bodies of 

 minute surface-creatures such as Diatoms and Foraminifera, which 

 are snapped up by the animals at the bottom. In reviewing the 

 facts concerning the deep-sea fauna with an eye to generalisations, one 

 is struck by the contradictory nature of the evidence. The environ- 

 ment seems to have acted differently in various cases. For instance, 

 the gills of the deep-sea fishes are shrunken and comparatively 

 rudimentary. On the other hand, the very same cause has produced 

 in other animals the reverse condition. Milne Edwards remarked 

 upon the enormous development of accessory gills in his gigantic 

 Isopod Bathynonuis ; and another Isopod belonging to the same family, 

 Anuropus, has the last pair of abdominal appendages converted into 

 gills. In some groups of animals the deep-sea representatives are 

 shrunken and dwindled in size as compared with their shallow-water 

 allies ; in other groups the very largest members known hail from the 

 deep-sea ; Bathynomns is an instance of the latter statement. There 

 is thus a good deal to do in the way of collating the abundant facts at 



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