LOUIS F. DE POURTALfes. 437 



of the Tidal Division. His reports to the Superintendent of the 

 United States Coast Surv'ey, incori)oratcd in the annual Reports, short 

 as they are, show the amount and vahie of his work. In addition to 

 this tidal work, he was also at times assigned to special duty, as, for 

 instance, at the magnetic station at Eastport. Previously to taking 

 charge of the Tidal Division, he l>ad heen acting under the more direct 

 supervision of the Superintendent of the Coast Survey, either in con- 

 nection with the tidal work or the calculation of longitudes. 



While in Florida his attention was drawn to the hahits of the Fo- 

 raminifera, then little known, and his first papers on this subject were 

 read at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science for 1850. They at once attracted attention, and after the 

 death of Professor Baily of West Point the larger series of samples 

 from the sea-bottoms, collected by the officers of the Coast Survey, 

 were submitted to him for examination. At that time the opinion of 

 Forbes, that the depths of the sea were absolutely barren of life, was 

 still generally accepted. Sharing this view with other naturalists, 

 Pourtales was nevertheless led to reconsider it in connection with his 

 observations on his Foraminifera, many of which had been brought up 

 from depths far below that considered by Forbes to be the limit of 

 life. Did they belong there, or was their natural habitat, like that 

 of others of their kind,* nearer the surface; and had they simply 

 dropped to the bottom after death, or been gradually washed down 

 from the reefs by the cm'rent ? This question is discussed with much 

 keenness of observation in his report on the Foraminifera collected 

 by Craven and Maffitt. He inclined to believe that they actually lived 

 where they were found, because the greater number of individuals in 

 these specimens are brought up in perfect condition, notwithstanding 

 the extreme delicacy of their shells. The faint pink color of the 

 Globigerinas, for instance, could scarcely be preserved had the speci- 

 mens been transported from a distance, and the best argument in favor 

 of their deeper habitat is found in the fact that the same species ai"e 

 found uninjured (and at great depths) as far north as New Jersey. It 

 is, however, still most perplexing that the same sjjecies are also found 

 living near Cuba and elsewhere in the West Indies under very differ- 

 ent conditions of light and temperature. 



He clearly saw that our ideas of the bathymetrical distribution of 

 the higher Invertebrates were to be greatly modified; for he says in one 



* Mr. Pourtales, in 1867, observed a species of Globigerina floating on tlie 

 surface off Havana. 



