LIIOfEAN SOCIETY OP LONDOIS". 19 



Aectic Ocean. 



In this' area I include Davis kS traits to the soutliern extremity 

 of Greenland, the sea round Iceland, the sea between Spitz- 

 bergen and Novaja Zemlia, Barents Sea. the Kara Sea, and the 

 whole ocean north of Asia and America, which, so far as its 

 abyssal fauna is concerned, is almost mare incognitum. Indeed, 

 very little work has been done in the polar sea ; but it was 

 here that the ancient belief in the azoic condition of the 

 depth of the sea received its first shock from actual experiment. 

 As early as the year 1818, that is nearly eighty years ago, 

 Sir John Eoss, on his voyage to Baffin's Bay, brought up from a 

 depth of 800 fathoms "a beautiful Caput Medusae {Gorgono- 

 cephalus areticus) entangled on the soundiug-line." * This hap- 

 pened in Lancaster Sound ; but other smaller animals were 

 obtained by him in a similar manner from sounding operations 

 in somewhat lower latitudes. Our second message from the 

 Arctic Deep Sea came by the ill-fated Pranklin Expedition, 

 and is contained in a letter written by H. Groodsir, one of the 

 surgeons, from Disco. He states that the Expedition entered 

 Davis Straits on June 23rd, 1844 ; " on the 28th a dredge was 

 sunk to the enormous depth of 300 fathoms, and produced many 

 highly interesting species of Mollusca, Crustacea, Asteriidse, 

 Spatangi, Corallines, and some large forms of 'Isopoda." f One 

 would have thought these two observations to have been of 

 sufficient weight to deserve attention. But so firmly rooted was 

 the conviction of Naturalists as to the non-existence of abyssal 

 life, that Hoss's and Goodsir's experiences were ignored, and 

 that even Edward Eorbes, as we shall see further on, was dis- 

 inclined to admit what he himself could not prove. 



Investigations in other parts of the world, notably those by 

 Sir James Hoss in the Antarctic and by Scandinavian natu- 

 ralists on their native coasts, fully agreed with the discoveries of 

 the Arctic travellers. But the -work which, perhaps, was the most 

 effectual in bringing about a change of the old erroneous 

 assumptions for the new line of thought, likewise falls into this 

 area. G. C. WaUich accompanied, in 1860, Sir P. L. M^CIintock 

 in H.M.S. ' Bulldog ' on a voyage across the North Atlantic to 

 survey the sea-bottom for the laying of the proposed Atlantic 

 cable. Dredging was foreign to the object of the expedition ; 

 but by the sounding operations a good deal of mud and, with it, 

 of organisms was brought to the surface ; higher animals, such 

 as Serpula, OpMacantlia spinulosa, were incidentally obtained 

 south of Iceland, midway between Greenland and Shetland, in 

 Davis Straits, from depths of upwards of 1000 fathoms. Slender 

 and fragmentary as these materials were, Wallich exercised in 

 the arguments based upon them such acumen and independence 



* Eoss, ' Baffin's Bay,' Appendix. 



t Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1845, xvi. p. 164. 



c2 



