THE ORIGIN OF THE OLDEST FOSSILS, ETC. 285 



The abundant life is not restricted to the growing edge of the 

 reef, and the inner lagoons are often like crowded aquaria. At 

 Nassau my party of eight persons found so much to study on a 

 little reef in a lagoon close to our laboratory that we discovered 

 novelties every day for four months, and our explorations seldom 

 carried us beyond this little tract of bottom. Every inch of the 

 bottom was carpeted with living animals, while others were darting 

 about among the corals and gorgonias in all directions. But this 

 was not all, for the solid rock was honeycombed everywhere by 

 tubes and burrows, and when broken to pieces with a hammer 

 each mass of coral gave us specimens of nearly every great group 

 in the animal kingdom. Fishes, Crustacea, annelids, mollusca, 

 echinoderms, hydroids, and sponges could be picked out of the 

 fragments, and the abundance of life inside the solid rock was 

 most wonderful. The absence of pelagic life in the landlocked 

 water of coral islands is as impressive and noteworthy as the 

 luxuriance of life upon and near the bottom. 



On my first visit to the Bahama Islands I was sadly disap- 

 pointed by the absence of pelagic animals, where all the conditions 

 seemed to be peculiarly favourable The deep ocean is so near 

 that, as one cruises near the inner sounds past the openings 

 between the islets which form the outer barrier, the deep blue 

 water of mid-ocean is seen to meet the white sand of the beach, 

 and soundings show that the outer edge is a precipice as high as 

 the side of Chimborazo and much steeper. 



Nowhere else in the world is the pure water of the deep sea 

 found nearer land or more free from sediment, and on the days 

 when the weather was favourable for outside collecting we found 

 siphonophores and pteropods, pelagic molluscs and Crustacea and 

 tunicates and all sorts of pelagic larvae in great abundance in the 

 open water just outside the inlets. 



Inside the barrier the water was always calm, and day after day 

 it was as smooth as the surface of an inland lake. When I first 

 entered one of these beautiful sounds, where the calm, transparent 

 water stretches as far as the eye can reach, while new beauties of 

 islets and winding channels open before one as those which are 

 passed fade away on the horizon, I felt sure that I had at last 

 found a place where the pelagic fauna of mid-ocean could be 



