250 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Antarctic expeditions we must not forget how much still 

 remains to be done within the Arctic circle. 



All this may seem to have little connection with our 

 L.M.B.C. work, but it is the natural extension and out- 

 come of what we have been doing. As the problems 

 develop we must widen our area. We commenced twelve 

 years ago with Hilbre Island and Liverpool Bay — our 

 work has now for several years extended all over the Irish 

 Sea. This means practically the western fauna of Britain 

 influenced by the Atlantic drift from the south-west and 

 the Arctic currents from the north. Whether the relation 

 of our north-western European fauna to that of north- 

 western America depends upon a common circum-polar 

 fauna as I have suggested, and whether our thorough 

 comprehension of the Arctic fauna is bound up, as Murray 

 thinks, with Antarctic explorations, are questions still to 

 be answered ; but this much is clear, that one enquiry in 

 the distribution of animals leads to another, and the 

 different faunas are like links in a chain or strands in a 

 net — the mesh-work of life extending over the globe — 

 just what w T e should expect from the consideration that 

 all living things spread from a centre, that multiplication, 

 struggle for existence, migration, survival of the fittest, 

 and varying degrees of isolation have produced the dif- 

 ference we now find between the present inhabitants of 

 the different regions. 



I should like, then, to push our L.M.B.C. investigations 

 further afield — out into the North Atlantic, across to 

 the West Indies, up into the Northern Seas. And all 

 that is wanting is a fund to meet the necessary expenses. 

 We can find the scientific men willing to give the time 

 and do the work. What we want is a yacht-owner willing 

 to use his vessel, fitted up with the necessary equipment, 



