4 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. | CHAP. I. 
Still the thing is possible, and it must be done 
again and again, as the years pass on, by naturalists 
of all nations, working with improving machinery, 
and with ever-increasing knowledge. For the bed of 
the deep sea, the 140,000,000 of square miles which 
we have now added to the legitimate field of Natural 
History research, is not a barren waste. It is inhabited 
by a fauna more rich and varied on account of the 
enormous extent of the area, and with the organisms 
in many cases apparently even more elaborately and 
delicately formed, and more exquisitely beautiful in 
their soft shades of colouring and in the rainbow-tints 
of their wonderful phosphorescence, than the fauna 
of the well-known belt of shallow water teeming with 
innumerable invertebrate forms which fringes the 
land. And the forms of these hitherto unknown 
living beings, and their mode of life, and their rela- 
tions to other organisms whether living or extinct, 
and the phenomena and laws of their geographical 
distribution, must be worked out. 
The late Professor Edward Forbes appears to have 
been the first who undertook the systematic study of 
Marine Zoology with special reference to the distribu- 
tion.of marine animals in space and in time. After 
making himself well acquainted with the fauna of 
the British seas to the depth of about 200 fathoms by 
dredging, and by enlisting the active co-operation of 
his friends-—among whom we find MacAndrew, Barlee, 
Gwyn Jeffreys, William Thompson, Robert Ball, and 
many others, entering enthusiastically into the new 
field of Natural History inquiry—in the year 1841 
Forbes joined Capt. Graves, who was at that time in 
command of the Mediterranean Survey, as naturalist. 
