DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE IN THE OCEAN. 151 



enables them to live under a weight, the one hundredth part of 

 which would be fatal to any terrestrial animal. 



For some years Forbes's theory was very generally accepted, 

 and the results of Darwin's and Dana's investigations, showing 

 that corals could not live beyond a depth of fifteen fathoms, 

 seemed to confirm it. But, quite recently, facts derived from 

 new and unlooked-for sources of information have given a check 

 to this theory. Commerce has come to the aid of science (re- 

 warding her for the gift first received at her hands), and the 

 telegraph cables, alive with the secrets of sea and land, have 

 brought us tidings from the deep. Dr. Wallich, the naturalist 

 who in 1860 accompanied the expedition to explore the bed of 

 the Atlantic, previous to laying the telegraphic cable, first called 

 attention again to this subject. He brought up various ani- 

 mals, highly organized, from a depth of about nineteen hundred 

 fathoms. 



Yet, in spite of this positive evidence added to the former ob- 

 servations of Ehrenberg, and to those of Sir James Ross, who, 

 in the Antarctic Sea, brought up an Euryale on a sounding-line 

 from a depth of eight hundred to a thousand fathoms, natural- 

 ists were slow to believe that the distribution of animal life in 

 the ocean was not limited to the shallow depths assigned by 

 Edward Forbes. In the Mediterranean and in the Red Sea, 

 from depths of eighteen hundred to two thousand fathoms, living 

 animals have been brought up on the telegraph wires, not of 

 doubtful infusorial character, hovering on the border-land be- 

 tween animal and vegetable life, but of considerable size, as, for 

 instance, one or two kinds of Crustacea, Cockles, stocks of Bry- 

 ozoa and tubes of Annelids. When the cable between France 

 and Algiers was taken up from a depth of eighteen hundred 

 fathoms, there came with it an Oyster, Cockle-shells, Annelid 

 tubes, Bryozoa and Sea-fans. As these animals were growing 

 upon it, there could be no doubt that they had their normal life 

 and development at this depth, and since they arc carnivorous, 

 they tell also of the existence of other animals with them on 

 which they feed. 



The dredge, which thus far has played an important part in 

 zoological researches, is destined to revolutionize many of our 



