378 BULLETIN OF THE 



result adds greatly to the interest excited by the cretaceous and tertiary 

 character of some of the animals discovered by M. Pourtales in the 

 deeper parts of the Gulf Stream. The true significance of this fact is, 

 however, too foreign to this report to justify a discussion of its bearing 

 upon the question of the origir of the present faunae. 



It would be ofnhe highest importance to ascertain, by actual observa- 

 tion, the whole extent of the range of the deep-sea fauna recently dis- 

 covered in the Gulf Stream, between the coasts of Florida and Cuba. 

 To secure this information a great amount of dredging must be done 

 from the eastern shores of the United States to the deepest waters of the 

 Atlantic Ocean, all along the coast from Florida to our Northern States. 

 Until such a comprehensive survey has been carried out, we can only 

 combine, as well as we may, the scanty data on hand, in our attempt 

 to form any idea of the northerly extension of the animals now known 

 to exist in that part of the Gulf Stream flowing between Florida, Cuba, 

 and the Bahamas. Happily the English and the Scandinavian natural- 

 ists have already collected a vast amount of information concerning the 

 marine fauna; of the coasts of Norway and the British Islands, and the re- 

 cent expeditions undertaken by the Swedish and by the English govern- 

 ments, with a view of exploring the greatest depths of the Atlantic 

 Ocean, cannot fail to afford the most valuable means of comparison be- 

 tween the fauna; of the two sides of the Atlantic in different latitudes. 

 From the reports of the British Association for Advancement of Science, 

 from the publications of Professor Sars, from the reports of Professors 

 Carpenter, Thompson, and Jeffreys, and from the private communications 

 received from Dr. Smitt and Mr. Ljungraan, the naturalists of the Swedish 

 man-of-war Josephine, which recently visited the harbor of Boston, we 

 have been able to ascertain that some of the species of our deep-sea 

 animals of 'Florida are found far to the north of the British Islands, on 

 the western coast of Norway, and near the Azores, upon the newly dis- 

 covered "Josephine Bank." Now all these stations lie in the course of 

 the Gulf Stream, as it divides into a northern or Scandinavian and a 

 southern or Lusitanic branch, after crossing obliquely the Atlantic Ocean 

 from our own shores, in the direction of Ireland ; and the question natu- 

 rally arises, Is not this wide distribution of the Florida deep-sea fauna to 

 be directly ascribed to the agency of the Gulf Stream? It can hardly 

 be otherwise, at least within certain limits. But at the same time we 

 must not forget that, in a comparatively recent period, the main motion 



