234 THE ATLANTIC. [cHap. 1. 
of the abyssal fauna may be found to have a very wide, per- 
haps even a universal, distribution. 
It is unfortunate that in the deepest haul of all—3150 
fathoms—no living thing was brought up higher in the scale 
than a foraminifer; but this I attributed at the time to the 
nature of the bottom; and this opinion was afterward borne 
out by the abundance, at scarcely a less depth, and on a bottom 
differing only in being somewhat less uniform, and containing 
sand-grains and a few shells of foraminifera, of tube-building 
annelids of a very common shallow-water type. The crustacea 
do not appear to suffer from the peculiarity of the circum- 
stances under which they live, either in development or in 
color. The singular fact of the suppression of the eyes in cer- 
tain cases has already been referred to. The echinoderms and 
sponges, which enter so largely into the fauna of the zone end- 
ing at 1000 fathoms, are not abundant at extreme depths. 
