[FOR THE USE OF MEMBERS. | 
Ropal Justitution of Great Britain. 
1851. 
WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 
Friday, February 14. 
The Duxse or NorTHUMBERLAND, President, in the Chair. 
Proressor Epwarv Forsrs 
On Recent Researches into the Natural History of the British Seas. 
Tue Natural History of the British Seas has for a long time been a 
favourite subject of investigation. Within the last fifteen years, 
however, fresh enquiries have been set on foot, and the details of 
their zoology and botany worked out to an extent beyond that to 
which the examination of any other marine province has been carried. 
Numerous and beautifully illustrated monographs, treating of their 
fishes, cetacea, portions of the articulata, the mollusca, radiata, 
zoophytes, sponges, and alg, have been published, either at private 
cost, or by patriotic publishers, or by the Ray Society, such as the 
scientific literature of no other country can show. As these have all 
been the results of fresh and original research, they present a mass 
of valuable data sufficient to form a secure basis for important 
generalizations. 
From these materials, and from the results of the enquiries into the 
distribution of creatures in the depths of our seas, conducted by a 
committee of the British Association, a clear notion may be formed 
of the elements of which our submarine population is composed. 
Extensive tables, exhibiting the sublittoral distribution of marine 
invertebrata, from the South of England along the Western coasts 
of Great Britain to Zetland, mainly constructed from the joint 
observations of Professor E. Forbes and Mr. Mac Andrew, are now 
preparing for publication, as a first part of a general report from the 
Committee referred to. The data embodied in these tables are the 
produce of researches conducted during the last eleven years, and 
registered systematically at the time of observation. 
British Marine animals and plants are distributed in depth (or 
bathymetrically) in a series of zones or regions which belt our shores 
from high water mark down to the greatest depths explored. The 
uppermost of these is the tract between tidemarks; this is the 
Lirrorat Zone. Whatever be the extent of rise and fall of the 
tide, this zone, wherever the ground is hard or rocky, thus affording 
No. 2. Cc 
