1292 THE ATLANTIC. [cHAP. II. 
tion in which the examples are usually found, and from the 
circumstance that they are not unfrequently associated with spe- 
cies of the genera AMelanocetus and Ceratias—lophioids whose 
form and structure are inconsistent with a pelagic life—the 
balance of probability seems greatly in favor of their having 
been taken on the bottom. 
The trawl seemed to have gone over a regular field of a deli- 
cate simple Gorgonoid, with a thin wire-like axis slightly twisted 
spirally, a small tuft of irregular rootlets at the base, and long 
exsert polyps. The stems, which were from 18 inches to 2 feet 
in length, were coiled in great hanks round the trawl-beam and 
entangled in masses in the net; and as they showed a most viv- 
id phosphorescence of a pale lilac color, their immense number 
suggested a wonderful state of things beneath—animated corn- 
fields waving gently in the slow tidal current and glowing with 
a soft, diffused light, scintillating and sparkling on the slightest 
touch, and now and again breaking into long avenues of vivid 
light indicating the paths of fishes or other wandering denizens 
of their enchanted region. The bottom in these later dredg- 
ings—anywhere, in fact, along the coast of Portugal at depths 
beyond 500 fathoms—consisted of the now well-known globi- 
gerina ooze; that is to say, it was a grayish calcareous paste, 
soft on the surface, becoming firmer below, and made up in a 
great degree of the shells of foraminifera—chiefly of the gen- 
era Globigerina and Orbulina—entire, or more or less broken 
up and disintegrated. 
Along with the foraminiferous shells, some other shells of 
much larger size enter in varying proportions into the compo- 
sition of the ooze, or perhaps may be rather said to be mixed 
with it. These are principally shells of Pteropods, with a few 
of those of Heteropods, and of pelagic Gasteropods. The last 
of these groups, the GasrEropopa, are well known. They in- 
clude the great mass of the mollusca of the present time; for 
example, the whelk, the periwinkle, and the garden snail. Their 
