vm 



to appear a rich and in many respects peculiar deep sea Fauna, of which only a very incom- 

 plete notion had previously existed. The number of new forms of animal life was therefore 

 also very considerable; and some of these were of peculiar interest, as more or less evidently 

 carrying us back to former telluric periods, especially the Fauna of the Cretaceous period. This 

 was specially evident in the case of an animal which my Father has therefore made the 

 subject of a separate and detailed treatise. I mean the little remarkable sea-lilly Rhizocrinus 

 lofotensis belonging to the family of the Apiocriuida;, which has been considered as long ago 

 extinct, but which flourished in the Oolitic period. The discovery excited gi-eat interest in the 

 scientific world, and may be said to have given the impiilse to the comprehensive investi- 

 gations of the Atlantic depths, which have been instituted with great liberality by the English 

 government in later years. By these grand English deep-sea expeditions, in connexion with 

 the deep-soundings executed during the Swedish Spitzbergen expeditions in the Arctic Ocean, 

 which have both extended even to the enormous depth of between 3000 and 3000 fathoms, 

 it has now been further ascertained that the great depths of the Ocean do not form, as was 

 formerly supposed barren tracts or deserts, but are peopled with a richly developed and pe- 

 culiar animal world, which on the whole shews a very clearly marked affinity to the Fauna of 

 the Cretaceous period, and in a great measure may really be considered as consisting of descen- 

 dents in direct line from the forms existing in that telluric period. This cannot indeed be 

 always so evidently proved, as in the case of the above mentioned sea-lilly, but it is also in 

 many other forms very distinctly expressed. We may therefore with Carpenter ' presume that the 

 Cretaceous formation is continued undisturbed at this present day in the depths of the Ocean; 

 and we may therefore assume that just here, there has been little change during all the pe- 

 riods of the earth ; and we may also expect to find just here, the descendents from the chalk 

 period most unchanged; while the Fauna at smaller depths, and especially the shore-Fauna, 

 would in a relatively short time, by reason of telluric and physical revolutions, be forced 

 entirely to change its character. It is also very probable that many of the remarkable forms 

 of animal life, from the great depths off our coast, more particularly described in the follow- 

 ing lines, are just such ancient slightly altered forms, which thus — apart from purely zoological 

 considerations — excite a very pecidiar interest, as giving us important indications with respect 

 to the historical, or rather the palseontological development of animal life. 



' See Carpenter on this subject. Preliminary report of dredging operations in the seas to the North of the British 

 islands, p. 192. 



