56 THE FAUNA OF THE DEEP SEA 



fathoms brought up numerous curious blind fishes, 

 ascidians, cuttlefishes, Crustacea, Pentacrinus, and 

 large vitreous sponges, and there are similar locali- 

 ties lying between Aru and Ke and between the 

 Nanusa archipelago and the Talaut islands. The 

 deep water off the Norwegian, Scotch, Irish, and 

 Portuguese coasts also seems to be particularly rich 

 in various forms of animal life. The same is pro- 

 bably true of the deep sea of many other regions 

 in the neighbourhood of land, and, although it 

 cannot be taken to be a rule without exceptions — 

 the abysmal fauna off the western coasts of the 

 Panama region being, according to the recent 

 researches of Alexander Agassiz in the ' Albatross,' 

 particularly poor — yet we can assert as a statement 

 of very general application that the further removed 

 from continental land, the poorer is the abysmal 

 fauna. 



Another argument that has been brought forward 

 by Moseley in support of his view is that there is a 

 certain relationship between the deep-sea fauna of 

 any particular region and the shallow-water fauna of 

 the nearest coasts. This is a point that is not easy 

 to illustrate by examples, but as Moseley 's argument 

 has not, so far as I am aware, been disputed by any 



