LI>'>'EA>' SOCIETT OF LOIfDOX. 25 



the two areas must be separated by an elevated ridge ; and such 

 actually was fouad to be the fact * : the ridge, which appro- 

 priiitely was called the Wyville Thomson ridge, shutting off the 

 cold water from the Arctic from the warm current moving north- 

 wards from the Tropics. During these cruises the trawl was 

 used for the first time in the British Deep Sea, gathering a 

 greater zoolosi-al harvest, particularly in tishes, than has been 

 possible to obtain by the dredge. In fact, no part of the deep 

 Atlantic surrounding the British Islands is better known than 

 the Faroe Channel. 



In a very instructive paper read before the Philosophical 

 Society of Glasgow t, John Murray has given some inter- 

 esting zoological statistics, the outcome of these investigations. 

 He collected the results of 15 dredgings in the warm area, and of 

 19 in the cold, in depths greater than 300 fathoms. Be.-ide 

 Polyzoa, 217 specifs were collected from the cold and 21(3 from 

 the warm area. Of these, only 48 species are common to both, 

 and of the sum total of 3S5 species over 150 belong to new 

 species discovered during these cruises. 96 of the species 

 obtained at these depths have been also recorded from water 

 above the 100-fathoms line. The species of Foraminifera, 205 in 

 number, show a similar distribution. 



In the same paper Mr. Murray uncomjiromisingly advocates 

 the view already held by L. Agassiz, that no continental land ever 

 existed in any of the abyssal areas. " We have in ti.ese areas 

 no traces of continental rocks." " The deposits now forming in 

 these abysmal regions far Irom the present continental Lmd have, 

 &o far as we yet know, no analogues in the geological series of 

 rocks." Yet, I cannot help thinking that our knowledge of the 

 nature of the rocks at the bottom of the seals, at present, to 

 use a mild expression, most imperfect. Is it not possible tliat 

 continental rocks at the abys-al sea-bottom are so hidden under 

 the deposit which has been in progress of formation for untold 

 ages, as to prevent us from penetrating to them ? Possibly the 

 day may come when borings or some similar operation will be 

 successfully carried out in the abysses, entirely upsetting our 

 present ideas of the geological nature of the sea-bottom. Besides, 

 we have no other means for accounting for the distribution of 

 the terrestrial fauna, more especially in the Southern Hemisphere, 

 except by assuming that great changes have taken place in the 

 extent and position of continental land, and, moreover, that these 

 changes were still in progress at periods at which our present 

 fauna, or at least part of it, was already in existence. 



In more recent years Mr. Murray has paid much attention to 

 the littoral zone of the N.W. coast of Scotland, touching ou a few 



* " Exploration ot the Faroe Channel," Proc. E. Soc. Edinb. 1882. Deep 

 Sea Espluration iu the Faroe Channel by H.M.S. ' Triton,' 1882 (Admiralty 

 Blue-buok in lol.). 



t " The Physical and Biological conditions of the Sea and Estuaries about 

 North Britain " : March 31, 1886. 



