278 THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [cHar. VI. 
hands of Dr. Stimpson for description at-the time 
of the terrible catastrophe which laid a great part 
of that city in ashes, and were destroyed; but, by 
a singularly fortunate accident, our colleague Mr. 
Gwyn Jeffreys happened to be in Chicago shortly 
before the fire, and Dr. Stimpson gave him a series 
of duplicates of the mollusca for comparison with 
the species dredged in the ‘ Porcupine,’ and a valu- 
able remnant was thus saved. M. de Pourtales, 
writing to one of the editors of Silliman’s Journal 
on the 20th of September, 1868, says: “The dredg- 
ings were made outside the Florida reef, at the 
same time as the deep-sea soundings, in lines ex- 
tending from the reef to a depth of about 400 to 
500 fathoms, so as to develop the figure of the 
bottom, its formation and fauna. Six such lines 
were sounded out and dredged over in the space 
comprised between Sandy Bay and Coffin’s Patches. 
All of them agree nearly in the following particu- 
lars: from the reef to about the 100-fathom line, 
four or five miles off, the bottom consists chiefly 
of broken shells and very few corals, and is rather 
barren of life. A second region extends from the 
neighbourhood of the 100-fathom line to about 300 
fathoms; the slope is very gradual, particularly 
between 100 and 200 fathoms; the bottom is rocky, 
and is inhabited by quite a rich fauna. The breadth 
of this band varies from ten to twenty miles. The 
third region begins between 250 and 3800 fathoms, 
and is the great bed of foraminifera so widely ex- 
_ tended over the bottom of the ocean. 
“From the third region the dredges Hoe up 
fewer though not lee interesting specimens, the 
