20 THE ATLANTIC. [ CHAP. I. 
seas by ordinary means, to depths of from 300 to 400 fathoms, 
and they found, contrary to the general impression of the Brit- 
ish school, that at these depths there was no lack of animal life, 
and that further, many of the animal forms were new and un- 
familiar, while many showed a much closer relation to the in- 
habitants of the seas of former geological periods than to the 
marine fauna of the present day. 
In the year 1868, when the question was thus undecided, Dr. 
Carpenter and I, looking at the matter chiefly as one of scien- 
tific interest, but at the same time fully recognizing the practi- 
cal importance of many of the results of such an investigation, 
induced the Council of the Royal Society to apply to the Ad- 
miralty to place means at our disposal to go into the whole 
question of the physical and biological conditions of the sea- 
bottom in the neighborhood of the British Islands, but beyond 
the range of ordinary boat work. The Admiralty assented, 
and, in the autumn of 1868, through about two months of 
wretched weather, we knocked about in the Lightning, a some- 
what precarious little gun-boat, between Scotland and Fiiroe. 
Nine tolerable days fortunately checkered the uniformity of 
the heavy weather, and on these we registered some remarkable 
results. 
We found that there was abundance of animal life at the 
bottom of the sea to a depth of 600 fathoms at least, and that 
the life there was not confined to the more simply organized 
animals, but extended very irrespectively through all the inver- 
tebrate classes, and even included some true bony fishes. | We 
found that the general character of the fauna at these depths 
was not such as to indicate a mere gradual disappearance of the 
known fauna of the British ocean, but was in many respects 
peculiar, and presented many characters in common with the 
faunse of older times. We found that, instead of having a 
constant and universal temperature of 4° C. beyond a certain 
depth, as had previously been very generally supposed to be 
