CHAP. III. ] TENERIFFE TO SOMBRERO. 233 
sample of the bottom, containing animals living, or which had 
been living when they entered the dredge; for in most cases 
when brought to the surface they were perfectly dead. Of the 
nine successful hauls, four were in depths above 1500 fathoms 
and under 2000, four above 2000 and under 3000, and one in a 
depth of 3150 fathoms. In each case, what with the slack of 
the line and the movement of the ship, the dredge had to travel 
from eight to ten statute miles through the water, and neces- 
sarily each dredging operation occupied a whole day. Under 
these circumstances, it was, of course, out of the question to at- 
tempt to make a perfect collection of the bottom fauna, partic- 
ularly since all our investigations tend to show that animal life, 
represented by the higher groups, is scattered and by no means 
abundant at extreme depths. Our object was to get a fair rep- 
resentation of the deep-sea fauna of this region, and to settle 
finally the question whether abysses existed where the con- 
dition depending upon depth was so extreme as to place a limit 
to the distribution of living beings. In the former of these 
objects I believe we have succeeded fairly; in the latter, com- 
pletely. 
The dredgings yielded at least 28 species, not including the 
foraminifera. Of these, 7 were mollusca (2 gasteropods and 5 
lamellibranchs) ; 3 crustaceans; 4 annelids and 1 gephyrean; 4 
molluscoids (1 brachiopod and 38 bryozoa); 2 aleyonarian and 
2 zoantharian corals; 3 echinoderms and 3 sponges. 
Four species of mollusca—referred to three genera which 
are abundant in water of moderate depth, Arca, Limopsis, and 
Leda—were dredged at a depth of 2740 fathoms, where they 
were associated with two species of bryozoa allied to well-known 
forms. 
All the mollusea which we took were small, and several of 
them appeared to be identical with species procured at great 
depths in the Porcupine dredgings ; a fact in favor of an opin- 
ion expressed by Professor Lovén and myself, that many forms 
